Letter SH
Letter sh is pronounced as in English 'sheep' and 'shot'. In Tanacross this sound never occurs at the end of a word.Click on a video below to see and hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words with SH.
shos bear
shih I, me
shchêl my younger brother
ilshuutl it swelled up
Letter sh sometimes occurs at the end of a syllable, This happens most frequently in the next to last syllable of a verb where sh has the meaning of ‘I’. Click below to hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words with sh at the end of a syllable.
Click below to hear Mrs. Laura Sanford illustrating the difference between sh and sh at the start of syllables.
Letter sh frequently occurs at the start of word, forming a syllable all by itself. Click on a Tanacross word below to see and hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words with sh as the first syllable.
my husband
my house
behind me
Sentences with contrasting palatal (SH-like) sounds.
Nshé'e shétth sheen shíi néh'ęh. Your (man's) son saw snow in summer.
Shos shłǐig' shax shíi éedah.
The bear is in my dog's house.
The bear is in my dog's house.
Shchâay iin shshax shíi xdéltth'ih. My grandchildren are staying in my house.
Tanacross sh is a voiceless palatal fricative [ʃ]. This sound occurs most commonly in the morpheme representing the first person singular subject in certain verb conjugations. For example, ishnąą 'I am drinking it'. Elsewhere this is a fairly rare sound in Tanacross, occurring for example in a few nouns such as shét 'wart'.
Letter sh is a semi-voiced fricative. It can generally be described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a fully voiced fricative.
There is no fully voiced palatal fricative in Tanacross. Where neighboring Athabascan languages exhibit a voiced palatal fricative, Tanacross has a semi-voiced palatal fricative (in stem-initial position) or a voiced palatal approximant (elsewhere).
similar sounds