Customer Reviews

One Thousand Useful Mohawk Words (Mohawk Edition)

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This dictionary is fairly short, has a plastic ring binding, and the English-to-Mohawk section is merely an index to the the Mohawk-to-English section. On the other hand, the entries are detailed with different word forms and sample sentences, there is a good grammatical overview and pronunciation guide included, and the price is extremely reasonable compared to larger Mohawk dictionaries. I recommend it for beginning students and those with a casual interest in Mohawk.

This book cannot truly be called a dictionary in my opinion, hence me calling it a glossary in the title of this review. That aside this is a good glossary of some very useful Mohawk words. How ever it is not the best out there. The problem is that their are very few Mohawk dictionaries out there, and fewer still in print and/or easily obtainable. Don't get me wrong, this is a good dictionary as I've said, but the writing system can be confusing at times. I recommend using the spelling in the brackets after each entry, as they are closer to how Mohawk is actually spelled in parts of Canada.

A further problem, which is not a problem if you know enough Mohawk grammar, is that the stems of the words are not explicitly stated in the book. This can be a problem when you want to try to use the word differently then it's used in the book, which can be a big problem for the novice. The grammar sketch at the beginning can help, but it's not the best representation of the grammar involved, though it is helpful. Kanyen'Keha Tewatati: Let's Speak Mohawk is a little better with the grammar, but it's still not the best. It is helpful that this book does state the type of stem though. For help with stems, I recommend A thousand words of Mohawk (Mercury series) if you can find a copy. It uses an odd spelling system, and doesn't follow the new guidelines for spelling Mohawk, but with a little knowledge it's easy enough to use.

Getting back to the book at hand, A 1000 Useful Mohawk Words, it's a great book to use so long as you have others to help with the things the book lacks. Just too bad there isn't a better and more comprehensive dictionary for Mohawk for sale, like there is for Cayuga and a few other Northern Iroquoian languages (from the U. of Toronto).