Letter TTH'
Letter tth' is a glottalized or ejective sound. It it pronounced like tth except with the vocal folds tightly closed so that air is released with a sudden burst or popping sound. Tanacross tth' occurs only at the beginning of a syllable. Letters tth and tth' can be difficult for learners to distinguish from each other.Click on a video below to see and hear Mrs. Irene Arnold pronouncing words with TTH'.
tth'áak plate
tth'êy mosquito
tth'ihtah still
Click below to hear Mrs. Laura Sanford illustrating the difference between tth’ and tth at the start of words.
Sentences with contrasting dental sounds.
Ddheł k'et taathéth déltthox naandeddh dídedháltth'ih. On the mountain you are all sitting in front of a brown tent.
Ttheetheł naadeddh dídzéltth'ih. We are sitting in front of the steambath.
Dihthâad tah ntthûuy ts'eeyithet. Your (man's) grandchild woke up at Mansfield.
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