Onondaga-English / English-Onondaga Dictionary

Description

Onondaga is an Iroquoian language spoken at the Six Nations Reserve, near Brantford, Ontario, and at Onondaga Nation, near Syracuse, New York. Once spoken by a large Iroquoian population in New York State, Onondaga is now spoken by only a small number of individuals. This comprehensive dictionary – the first of its kind – provides an invaluable tool for the teaching and preservation of the Onondaga language.

The “Onondaga-English/English-Onondaga Dictionary” is the result of Hanni Woodbury’s thirty years of research conducted with contemporary speakers and her study of nineteenth- and twentieth-century textual sources. The dictionary provides meanings and inflections for each lexical base, as well as cross-references for related bases and additional grammatical, phonological, historical, and cultural information. The appendices, organized under the headings ‘Nature, ‘ ‘People, ‘ and ‘Household and Community, ‘ include lists of words that play an important role in daily life. This much-needed resource will be invaluable to ongoing efforts to sustain this endangered language.