May 1, 2003, Gazette
English-Cayuga, Cayuga-English Dictionary
By Dr. Carrie Dyck, Lottie Keye, Alfred Keye, and Frances Froman
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In 1992, the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, ON,
decided to produce a dictionary and grammar guide for the Cayuga language.
Initially the group thought it would take two years to complete both projects.
Seven years later, the dictionary was published by the University of Toronto
Press.
Dr. Carrie Dyck, who started work on the English-Cayuga, Cayuga-English
Dictionary in 1994 calls it “a labour of love.”
About 100 people now speak the language, and the Cayuga school at Six
Nations Reserve near Brantford offers a K-12 immersion program. Part of
the reason for compiling this dictionary was to offer curriculum material
for the school.
Cayuga is an Iroquoian language related to the Mohawk and Seneca languages.
There are many recordings of the oral tradition of the Cayuga.
“A dictionary is another step in helping record that oral tradition
and codify it,” she said.
To write the dictionary, Dr. Dyck started with word lists such as the
2,000 word list compiled by the Summer Institute of Linguistics.
“Because there are lots of concepts in Iroquoian languages that
aren’t expressed in English, we used Mohawk and Seneca word lists,
too,” she said.
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The three other listed authors are the Cayuga speakers.
“They gave me the words and I did the rest,” she explained.
The dictionary contains over 3,000 entries, including 1,000 verb forms
and many nouns never before recorded in print.
The book is dedicated to Reg Henry, the designer of the Cayuga writing
system.
The grammar guide is the next project and Dr. Dyck will be working on
that over the summer.
Dr. Dyck said she’s pleased with the result of her work.
“It’s a very meaningful and rewarding experience to be able
to work with speakers of another language to produce something that they
really wanted to produce,” she said.
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