Arts Education
Learning the Kanyen’kéha language with an animated teacher When it comes to By Jennifer Shea
learning the native Mohawk language and culture of Kanyen’kéha, children and adults now have the option of following animated six-year-old Tsítha (sounds like Jee-tah) and her friends on the website, Learning with Tsítha (Tsatéweyenst Skátne ne Tsítha).
With funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the website was created by the Tsi Tyonnhéht Onkwawen:na Language
and Cultural Centre (TTO) and launched in June 2020. In less than a year, the site has amassed more than 2,000 regular users from Toronto to Montreal – far beyond Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.
Carman Maracle, Creative Director of the website, describes the main character as being similar to Dora the Explorer: “Tsítha is probably a six-year-old Kanyen’kéha girl, very inquisitive, very curious about nature and her community.
She likes solving problems; she gets involved in things where she thinks she can be helpful and does it in the language, which is key to the whole thing.”
Website visitors can watch animated stories, listen to an audiobook, or practice the language through word games, memory games and math challenges. Words are shown and sounded out by syllable and all of the pages have captions in English. Beyond learning the words of this beautiful native language, the site is filled with rich cultural references. For example, “The Beginning” is a video that describes the Rotinonhsyon:ni (Iroquois) creation story. Callie Hill, the Executive Director of the TTO, is especially pleased that the voiceover on the website has been done by a local family. “The mom and dad are both second language speakers
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