Tlingit Language Essay

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* The Tlingit tribe lived in the North West Pacific * They Built Villages near the water to make hunting and trading easier Sounds Tlingit has a large consonant inventory, with between  and  consonants depending on dialect and in some cases idiolect (§.). ere is a three-way distinction in stops and affricates between plain, aspirated, and ejective, and in fricatives there is a two-way distinction between plain and ejective except for the lack of */ʃʼ/ (§..).⁵ Tlingit has four unique consonants, the ejective fricatives /xʼ/, /xʼʷ/, /χʼ/, and /χʼʷ/ (§..). In most dialects of Tlingit there is only one nasal /n/, which is also the sole voiced obstruent, however certain Interior Tlingit dialects have /m/ as well. Dialects lacking /m/ thus lack labial consonants, given that /w/ is not a labial but is instead a rounded counterpart of /ɰ/. e laer velar approximant /ɰ/ is now essentially extinct, having split and merged into /j/ or /w/ depending on rounding context, but /ɰ/ is recorded in speech as late as the s and s among some elderly speakers of certain dialects (§...). Tlingit has a large inventory of lateral sounds, both affricates and fricatives, but lacks the voiced lateral */l/.⁶ ere are rounded gloals /ʔʷ/ and /hʷ/ which are phonemic for some speakers but not for others; it is possible that rounded gloals were once more common but are being lost as with /ɰ/. Vowels in Tlingit are relatively simple. All dialects have a four vowel system with /i/, /e/, /a/, and /u/, and all dialects have a distinction between long and short vowels. In the Carcross and Teslin communilects the short vowel /a/ merges with /e/ for most speakers, but the distinction is maintained in the long vowels. Tlingit dialects have various tone systems, with the majority form in Northern Tlingit having a two-way distinction between unmarked

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