Letter CH
Letter ch' is a glottalized or ejective sound. It it pronounced like ch except with the vocal folds tightly closed so that air is released with a sudden burst or popping sound. Tanacross ch' occurs only at the beginning of a syllable.Click on a video below to see and hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words with CH.
ch'ox porcupine quills
ch'ěl' clothes
ch'iigod fork
Click below to hear Mrs. Laura Sanford illustrating the difference between ch, ch’ and j at the start of syllables.
Tanacross contains six consonants which are written with an apostrophe in the practical orthography: tth', t', ts', tl', ch', k'. These are the so-called glottalized or ejective sounds. They are produced using a glottalic airstream, made by keeping the vocal folds tightly together until after the stop is released. These sounds only occur syllable initially.
Note that the apostrophe by itself represents a glottal stop, a distinct consonant which is not an ejective. When it is necessary to differentiate in the practical orthography between an ejective and a sequence of consonant plus glottal stop, a hyphen is employed. Thus, neek'eh 'our tracks', with an ejective k', versus nek-'ęh 'I see it' , with a sequence k plus glottal stop '.
similar sounds