Letter SH (SH underscore)
Letter sh starts out as Tanacross sh but ends with the vocal cords vibrating. 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 SH (SH underscore).
shax house
shíi in, inside
deshaaz cow moose
Click below to hear Mrs. Laura Sanford illustrating the difference between sh and sh at the start of syllables.
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 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