No, it’s not Munsee. It’s not Unami. Nor Mohegan. Nor even Mahican. Valuable for pronunciation? E’eh. Extremely.
While listening I realized I had memorized more Mohegan from studies years ago than I thought I had, as I began to recognize words by their sounds despite the text. One word in particular got my mind going: awasos.
It was the first time I was getting to hear this word outloud, and even though I had learned the Modern Mohegan term, awahsos, I know I’ve always mentally spoken it with American English inflection. Particularly I’ve a tendency to stress the second vowel syllable in a Southern American English way. That is not how it’s spoken here.
It also got me looking something up.
In the Modern Mohegan dictionary given to me by Stephanie Fielding, the word for bear is “awahsos”. The Abenaki word for bear is awasos. However, in 1760 the recorded Pequot for bear by Stiles is a’hawgwut1.
I know that Modern Mohegan is partially made up of having to piece things together, which when I’d started this blog I’d mentioned it as a reason for me to switch to one of the surviving languages to get my legs under me. So it’s not lost on me that the Abenaki word and the official word in the Modern Mohegan dictionary are virtually one and the same. Cultural exchange? Something else? These are the facts, folks. I have no idea past that.
I encourage, especially if you struggle with pronunciation as much as I do, that you listen and enjoy. The way the bears are drawn is pretty cool, too.
- As recorded by Stiles and repeated by Trumbul ↩︎