Letter S (S underscore)
Letter s can be thought of as a sound that begins as Tanacross s and ends as Tanacross z. This sound occurs only at the start of a syllable.Click on a video below to see and hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words with S (S underscore).
xunsųų it (area, weather) is good, nice
lsaaz money
sâay rice
Click below to hear Mrs. Irene Solomon Arnold illustrating the difference between
s and s.
Sentences with contrasting sibilant (S-like) sounds.
Stsêey ts'eyh súu éhtsįį. My grandfather made a nice canoe.
Súus éł jîiz éł ts'ôgh tah ts'į́ xétsax.
The robin and the jay in the tree are crying.
Êy ts'éhxeh seey tsêdl dat-sęy sínt'eh. That is that woman's black pocket knife.
Tanacross contains five consonants which are represented in the practical orthography with an underscore: ł, th, s, sh, x. These consonants have been described as semi-voiced or partially voiced fricatives. They can be informally described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a voiced sound.
The voicing transition can be seen quite clearly in the following spectrogram for
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For other segments the voicing transition is not quite so evident. For example, compare the voiceless dental fricative th in the following spectrogram for na'ihthet 'I am standing'
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with the semi-voiced fricative in the spectrogram of na'ethet 's/he is standing'.
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No clear evidence of voicing is present in either spectrogram. The distinguishing feature is the presence of a much greater degree of high-amplitude noise in the voiceless segment. It is this observation which leads to the characterization of the voiceless segments as fortis, and the semi-voiced and voiced fricatives as lenis.
For more information see Holton (2001) Fortis and lenis fricatives in Tanacross Athapaskan. International Journal of American Linguistics.
similar sounds