Mohawk-English Dictionary

Alternate Language Names

Kanien’kéha, Kanyen’kéha.

Region

Ontario and Quebec, Canada; New York, United States.

Who

Nancy Bonvillain, Beatrice Francis.

Others Involved

Beatrice Burns, Gloria Thompson, Ronald Thompson, Bernice Seymour (Contributors); Mary Thomas, Mary Tebo, Ernest Benedict, Paul Caldwell (Language Consultants); Florence Benedict (Language Consultant and Editor).

Publishing Information

This dictionary was published in 1971 by the Mohawk Tribal Council and the St. Regis Band Council.

How People are Cited

People are cited in the Acknowledgements section.

How Information is Cited

Speakers, who seem to provide much of the information in the dictionary, are mentioned in the Acknowledgements.

Where is Information Coming from

Information seems to come directly from speakers who worked with Nancy Bonvillain and from field work done by Nancy Bonvillain on the St. Regis reserve.

Tools and Framework used

This dictionary is available as a physical book or a digitized PDF.

Access

This dictionary can be accessed through select libraries and the digitzed PDF is open access through the Six Nations Public Library. The digitized PDF is incomplete, containing on the English to Mohawk section of the dictionary.

Included Languages and Directionality

English to Mohawk; Mohawk to English.

Dialects Included

No dialect is specified for this dictionary.

Type of Dictionary

This dictionary is a bilingual, bidirectional topical wordlist.

How are Entries Organised

The beginning of the dictionary includes a large section on how to pronounce Mohawk words. This is followed by a Noun Dictionary from English to Mohawk.

The Noun Dictionary is organised by categories such as People, Numbers, and Animals. Each category header is followed by a wordlist of English words which fall under that category in alphabetical order, followed by Mohawk translations. Mohawk translations are listed in two ways. On the left, the word is written in a form introduced in the seventeenth century and currently used by many Mohawk people. On the right is a form based on phonemics. Sometimes entries do not include a phonemic translation. Some entries are English phrases, but translate into single Mohawk words.

After the Noun Dictionary comes a Verb Dictionary where entries are again organised in alphabetical order (omitting the “to”. For example, “to climb” would be organised by the word “climb” and put into the dictionary in the “C” section). These entries also include the two forms of Mohawk translation.

The WorldCat entry references a second section that includes a Mohawk to English dictionary, but we are unable to access this section to determine how entries are organized.

Other Features

Other Notes

The information about this entry comes from a digitized PDF which is missing approximately 100 of the 216 pages in this book. The omitted section is the Mohawk to English dictionary referenced on WorldCat.