Mohawk phonology

The phoneme inventory is as follows (using the International Phonetic Alphabet). Phonological representation (underlying forms) are in /slashes/, and the standard Mohawk orthography is in bold.

Consonants
An interesting feature of Mohawk (and Iroquoian) phonology is that there are no labials, except in a few adoptions from French and English, where and  appear (e.g., mátsis matches and aplám Abraham); these sounds are late additions to Mohawk phonology and were introduced after widespread European contact. The word "Mohawk" is an exonym.

The Central (Ahkwesáhsne) dialect has the following consonant clusters:

All clusters can occur word-medially; those on a red background can also occur word-initially.

The consonants and the clusters  are pronounced voiced before any voiced sound (i.e. a vowel or ). They are voiceless at the end of a word or before a voiceless sound. is voiced word initially and between vowels.


 * car – kà:sere
 * that – thí:ken
 * hello, still – shé:kon

Note that th and sh are pronounced as consonant clusters, not single sounds like in English thing and she.

Vowels
i, e, a, and o are oral vowels, while ' and ' (see help:IPA) are nasalized; oral versions of ' and ' do not occur in the language.