About the Wendat Dictionary
This dictionary is the result of many years of linguistic research with the Wendat archival documentation, consisting of approximately 4,700 pages spread across twelve dictionaries and lexicons, three grammars, and three collections of religious texts.
Since the missionaries who documented Wendat in the 17th and 18th centuries did not hear or transcribe all the distinctive sounds of the language, the forms in the archival documentation contain errors and ambiguities and must be analyzed before being used in reclamation efforts. Therefore, each entry and example in this dictionary underwent a process of reclamation-driven reconstruction (Lukaniec 2022, in press). This reconstruction, which involves a comparative analysis with forms in other Northern Iroquoian languages, restores the Wendat forms in the archival documentation closer to the state in which they were spoken and transliterates them into a standardized orthography (decided upon by the Wendat Language Committee and adopted by resolution by the Council of the Huron-Wendat Nation in 2010).
This dictionary was created in direct response to the need for more reconstructed content for Wendat language learners and teachers. The hope is that this dictionary will help advance Wendat language reclamation efforts of the Huron-Wendat Nation of Wendake, Québec.
This dictionary was made possible by a University of Victoria’s Internal Research/Creative
Project Grant (2019) and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight
Development Grant for Kwakwendahchondiahk We are preparing our words
: Building bilingual dictionaries of Wendat from archival documentation (2020-2023).
We would like to thank and acknowledge the Wendat Language Committee, who served as a important consulting body for this project, the University of Victoria’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre, who provided and continue to provide essential technical support, and the eight undergraduate and graduate research assistants for this project (see also Team), whose help with transcribing, encoding, and proofing the Wendat archival documentation and identifying cognates was invaluable.