The traditional territory of the Onondaga people is in the area around Onondaga lake in New York state. Today, there are two communities, one south of Syracuse, the other being Six Nations in Ontario.
Each of the communities has its own writing system. There are only a few cosmetic differences between them. Both these orthographies are briefly discussed in the Onondaga Dictionary, which itself uses a more Iroquoianist linguistics writing system.
Note: There are several Roman Orthography conventions on this site that may require further explanation. On the charts below, there is lots of phonetic terminology that may not be familiar to everyone.
The United States Census counts 29 speakers, and the Canadian Census groups the Onǫnda’géga’ language together with other Iroquoian languages. Howe and Cook report fewer than 50 speakers in Canada, and less than 15 in the U.S. Compare these figures to those on the main Iroquoian page on this site, which were collected from within the communities themselves.
| bilabial | alveolar | pal.-alveolar | velar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| lenis stop | t / d | k / g | ’ | ||
| affricate | j | ||||
| voiceless fricative | s | sh | h | ||
| nasal | n | ||||
| approximate | w | y |
| front oral | front nasal | back oral | back nasal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| high | i | ǫ / oñ | ||
| mid | e | ę / eñ | o | |
| low | ä | a |