Iroquoian Languages

a group of closely related North American Indian languages in the northeastern part of the USA and adjacent regions of Canada. The group includes Iroquois, Erie, Seneca, Oneida, Tuscarora, Mohawk, Huron, and Cherokee. Together with the Caddo, Pawnee, Arikara, and some other languages in the central part of the USA, the Iroquoian languages are sometimes grouped in the Iroquois-Caddoan family, which is provisionally included in the more extensive Hokan-Siouan family.

The phonetic system of the Iroquoian languages has fewer than 20 phonemes with a high percentage of vowels. Noun morphology is considerably poorer than verb morphology. The verb is polysynthetic and, in addition to a rich system of affixation, uses incorporation of the direct object. It constitutes the nucleus of the sentence. The Iroquoian languages have well-developed derivation. A syllabic writing system consisting of 85 characters, which was created in the early 19th century by an American Indian named Sequoyah, existed in Cherokee.