History Briefs

The Iroquoian languages all bear a great deal of similarity to one another. Indeed, it was not long ago that you could find many people who could speak 3, 4 or more of these languages with great fluency, due, in large part, to how similar they are to one another. Mohawk speakers, for instance, often report having little trouble understanding people speaking Oneida, and vice-versa (this is one reason why some might want to consider Mohawk and Oneida as dialects of the same language). The same often holds true for speakers of Mingo, Cayuga, Seneca and Wyandot. Among the Northern Iroquoian languages (that is, all of them except Cherokee), the main differences lie in matters of pronunciation, and less so in vocabulary or grammatical structure, so that if someone knows how to speak one of those languages, they can acquire a working knowledge of one of the others with comparatively little effort. On the other hand, Cherokee has more substantial differences which set it apart from the Northern languages, and while its Iroquoian nature clearly shows through under close inspection, the similarities are much less obvious.