Letter TS'
Letter ts' is a glottalized or ejective sound. It it pronounced like ts except with the vocal folds tightly closed so that air is released with a sudden burst or popping sound. Tanacross ts' occurs only at the beginning of a syllable.Click on a video below to see and hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words with TS'.
ts'ôgh spruce tree
ts'éhxeh woman
ts'į́' to, toward
Click below to hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words illustrating the contrast between ts and ts’.
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 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