When the first Europeans began settlement of North America, as one of their first courses of action, they had to learn the Native American language, no mean task without textbooks.
In New York State, the Iroquois language held sway among the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy: The Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras. And while their tongue was characterized as a primitive and unwritten language, yet it was sonorous and well-developed.
The Iroquois did not have a written language until the Europeans came and used their alphabet to spell the Indian words phonetically. This makes fluency difficult to learn because not all languages use the same voice sounds.
Lewis Morgan, a lawyer, friend of Seneca Sachem Ely Parker and student of Indian language, wrote about the Iroquois tongue in 1851. Even then, he feared the language was dying out, but stated it would last forever in the Indian names of the "hills and vales and ever-flowing rivers." The Six Nations, he noted, could understand each other, but used different dialects. It would be like Western New Yorkers trying to understand a British, Brooklyn or Alabama dialect.
Morgan said the alphabet common to the Six Nations contained only 19 letters: A, C, D, E, G, H, I, J, K, N, O, Q, R, S, T, U, W, X and Y. The Iroquois language did not use labial sounds -- sounds made when the lips come together -- such as B and V.
This fact, as one researcher put it, allowed the Iroquois to speak and be readily understood with a pipe clenched between the teeth.
In the formation of language, nouns originated first, because names must be given to things before relations between them can be determined or actions can be assigned to them. Morgan said much of the beauty of a language depends on nouns and the Iroquois had many three- and four-syllable nouns.
One such noun is the Iroquois name for their confederacy, or ho-de-no-sau-nee, meaning "people of the longhouse." Of the Six Nations, Morgan said, the Tuscarora have the dialect most different from the other five nations.
The plural of words is noted by inflection, Morgan wrote. "Bird" is je-da-o and "birds" is je-da-o-suh-uh.
The Iroquois language is also rich in adjectives and comparison is effected by adding a word and not by inflections. Thus, "sweet" is o-ga-uh, "sweeter" is ah-gwus-o-ga-uh and "sweetest" is ha-yo-go-sote-o-ga-uh.
The language does not employ the indefinite articles "a" or "an," but has a definite article "the," or na.
The prepositions "of," "to" and "for" are not found in the Iroquois language, but are indicated by some imperfect declensions of nouns. Latin and Greek, Morgan pointed out, had full declensions of nouns, so that endings indicated the prepositions. Modern language has basically done away with noun declension and instituted the prepositions.
As an illustration, Morgan cited the word for "house," ga-no-sote. The Iroquois word to indicate of, to or from a house is ha-to-no-sote.
The Iroquois verbs, Morgan wrote, "are conjugated with great regularity and precision, making the active and passive voices, all the moods except the infinitive, and all the tenses, numbers and persons common to the English verb."
In naming places, Morgan wrote, "The ho-de-no-sau-nee was eminently fortunate in engraving their names upon the features of nature, if they were desirous of a living remembrance. No one can turn to the lake, or river, or streamlet, to which they have bequeathed an appellation, without confessing that the Indian has perpetuated himself by a monument more eloquent and imperishable than could be fabricated by human hands."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 15 2003 |