zompist bboard

It's the name of the main character on the new Assassin's Creed game. Through much of the beginning the characters seem to be speaking Mohawk, but I'm not sure if they're actually speaking it or if it's just gibberish. Sounds pretty natural to me.

Anyway, anyone know how the Mohawk would pronounce Ratonhnhaké:ton? All the answers online are like "rah-doon-ha-gae-doon", but you know that won't do it for us (amateur) linguists. For example, I'm assuming the semicolon is for a long e, but then why the acute? I think there is a palatal nasal in there, followed by /h/, but I don't get why its spelled "nhnh"... IPA would be great.

Very interested to see what people think.

I would guess something like /4atõhnhake:tõ/ with the accent mark indicating a high pitch accent.

I've thought that it's possibly /radu~hn_0age:du~/, with the seemingly-illegal <hnh> cluster being a devoicing of an n following a syllable-final h. Bonvillain's grammar of Akwesasne says that /n/ only devoices following a /?/, not after /h/... but I dunno maybe it's some other dialect or something.

EDIT: Wikipedia says that Eastern dialect has retroflex /ɽ/. I noticed in this the lady has a retroflex pronunciation-- more pertinently, a rather strong retroflex pronunciation that I don't think would be the result of an Anglophone speaker projecting an American r into the pronunciation. So I suspect she may be, if not a native speaker, someone at least exposed to the language... which suggests that the game uses Eastern dialect.

I have an absolutely fucking dreadful ear for this kind of thing, though, so I'm not gonna say how good the main guy's pernunk is.

What I find most interesting, though, is that they actually used a colon when spelling his name in the in-game subtitles. Props.

<on> is a vowel letter in this Mohawk orthography, which I assume is still the standard. Wikipedia says /ũ/.

the linked standardization wrote:
The letter "h" can appear in a series or in a cluster of letters. The letter "h" is written at the end of a syllable and at the beginning of the next syllable. In most cases, the letter "h" is separated by the letter "n." This is shown in the following examples:
Kah n hóha door
Kah n hotonkwa keys
akia'tah nha belt
atenentshah nha watch
iónhnhe It lives.
sehnhó:ton Open the door.
konwahnhá'skwe They used to hire her.

I'm not sure whether this means an epenthetic /n/ was inserted, or an orthographic <hnh> represents /hh/ or something. I think the former is more likely.
My best guess as to the pronounciation would be:
/ɽadũhnhagé:dũ/

but I'm not sure if they're actually speaking it or if it's just gibberish.

They got Mohawk speakers to provide the dialogue. I'm not sure about the main character himself, the voice actor isn't Mohawk and said in an interview that he had to learn some lines. So maybe his adult version doesn't speak good, fluent Mohawk.

EDIT: Wikipedia says that Eastern dialect has retroflex /ɽ/. I noticed in this the lady has a retroflex pronunciation-- more pertinently, a rather strong retroflex pronunciation that I don't think would be the result of an Anglophone speaker projecting an American r into the pronunciation. So I suspect she may be, if not a native speaker, someone at least exposed to the language... which suggests that the game uses Eastern dialect.

That would make sense, as she's supposed to be the elder in the game, and they would've gotten an old person to speak her lines. Older people of course would be more likely to be native speakers.

It's an interesting language. Sort of sounds like they've got marbles in their mouth.