| Also Known As: Onandaga,Onondaga
Description:
Onondaga Nation Language (Onöñda’gega’ (IPA /onũtaʔkekaʔ/), "People of the Hills") is the language of the Onondaga First Nation, one of the original five constituent tribes of the League of the Iroquois (Hodenosaunee).
This language is spoken in the United States and Canada, primarily on the reservation in central New York state, and near Brantford, Ontario.
There are three stops, /t/, /k/, and the glottal stop /ʔ/ (before vowels and approximants, /t/ and /k/ are allophonically voiced to [d] and [g], and are spelled and in these situations); three fricatives, /s ʃ h/; nasal /n/; and approximants /w/ and /j/ (spelled ). There is also an affricate, spelled .
Onondaga has five oral vowels, /i e o æ a/ (/æ/ is normally represented with ), and two nasal vowels, /ẽ/ and /ũ/. The nasal vowels, following the Iroquoianist tradition, are spelled with ogoneks in Ontario ( and ). In New York, they are represented with a following ( and ). Vowels can be both short and long, in which case they are written with a following colon, .
Like all Iroquoian languages, Onondaga is a polysynthetic language, meaning that many grammatical and lexical concepts are..... full article at Wikipedia |