The Tanacross Writing System

Although the Tanacross language has been spoken for many generations, systems for writing the language have only recently emerged. The writing system, or orthography, used here follows that developed in the 1990s by the Yukon Native Language Centre and the Alaska Native Language Center, as exemplified in Irene Solomon-Arnold’s Tanacross Language Lessons< (1994) and Tanacross Phrases and Conversations (2003)

The writing system makes use of many of the symbols in the English alphabet, supplemented by a one special character (the "barred-l" ł) and several diacritic marks, including a nasal "hook" below vowels and four kinds of tone marks above vowels. Many Tanacross sounds are represented by more than one alphabetic letter or symbol. However, both individual letters and letter combinations ("blends") are referred to here as letters.

The Tanacross writing system is much more faithful to the spoken word than in the English writing system. That is, most Tanacross letters or letter combinations (“blends”) have a consistent pronunciation. However, the sound associated with a given Tanacross letter may not necessarily be the same as the sound associated with that letter in English. For example, Tanacross <ee> has the sound in English ‘say’, not the sound in English ‘see’.

Sounds which are written and pronounced as in English

A number of letters and letter combinations used in the Tanacross alphabet have roughly the same pronunciation as they do in English.

Some symbols represent sounds which occur in English but are not found at the beginning of a word. In Tanacross these sounds can occur at the beginning of a word.

Sounds which occur in English but are spelled differently in Tanacross

At least one Tanacross sound does occur in English but is spelled differently.

Sounds which do not occur in English

Still other Tanacross sounds do not occur at all in English and hence must be written with a special letter or combination of letters.

One very noticeable type of sound which does not occur in English is the glottalized or ejective consonant. These sounds are a feature of all Athabascan languages (and many other Native American languages). When the apostrophe follows certain consonants, it indicates glottalization, a “catch-in-the-breath” sound formed by using the closed vocal chords to compress the air in the vocal tract. Glottalized sounds are sometimes found at the end of English words (for example, some speakers’ pronunciation of the word “back”).

The apostrophe and the hyphen

The apostrophe ( ‘ ) has a special meaning in the Tanacross alphabet. By itself it indicates a glottal stop, the sound which occurs in the middle of the English exclamation uh-oh. Sometimes it is necessary to indicate that a glottal stop is not part of the previous letter. In this case, a hyphen (-) is used to separate the previous letter and the glottal stop. An example is nek-‘ęh ‘I see’. It would be wrong to write this as nek’ęh because this word does not contain a glottalized k (k’).

The underscore

The underscore (  _  ) is used in combination with certain letters and letter combinations to indicate that a sound begins voiceless and becomes voiced as it is pronounced. Thus, the sound sh sounds very much like shy and the sound s sounds very much like sz.

Vowels

Tanacross has five vowel symbols: i, e, a, o, u. All but o can occur either long or short. The long vowels are written double. The exact pronunciation of long versus short vowels may vary depending on context.

Nasalization

Vowels may be nasalized, that is, pronounced with air coming out through the nose as well as the mouth. This is indicated with the nasal hook under the vowel. Note that the vowel o does not occur nasalized.

Tone

Vowels may also be marked for tone using one of four diacritic marks above the vowel. Low tone is unmarked. It should be noted that learning materials use tone marking to aid in learning to pronounce Tanacross words correctly. Fluent speakers will have no trouble producing the correct tone without the aid of any tone marking. It is thus perfectly possible and acceptable to write Tanacross without the tone marks.

History

Many different practical orthographies have been used to write Tanacross in pedagogical and linguistic publications. Leer (1982) recognizes three distinct phases of Tanacross orthography. The first stage is exemplified by Nancy McRoy’s work in the early 1970s (see McRoy 1973). The second stage is exemplified in the work of Ron Scollon later in the same decade (Scollon 1979; Paul 1980). The third stage is exemplified by Leer’s work with Alice Brean in the early 1980s. The system employed in Kari’s work can be said to represent a fourth stage chronologically, though it is in many ways a hybrid of the second and third stages (Kari 1991b, 1991a). Kari’s system incorporates the vowel system and tri-graph dental affricates ( tth and ddh ) of the third stage but does not distinguish semi-voiced fricatives with underscore. A fifth stage of Tanacross orthography is exemplified by publications of the Yukon Native Language Centre (Solomon 1994, 1996; Isaac 1997) and the Alaska Native Language Center (Arnold 2003). This orthography incorporates the stage-three changes and adds five types of vowel tone marking. This system is employed in most current Tanacross work, including that presented in The Sounds of Tanacross.

References

Arnold, Irene, Gary Holton & Rick Thoman. 2003. Tanacross Phrases and Conversations. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center.

Holton, Gary. 2003a. "More issues in Tanacross orthography." Ms., Alaska Native Language Center Archives. Fairbanks.

______. 2003b. "Shallow tone marking and literacy Alaska Athabascan languages." Proceedings of the 2003 Athabaskan Languages Conference, ed. by Siri Tuttle. (ANLC Working Paper 3.) Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center

______. 2004. "Writing Tanacross without special fonts". Ms., Alaska Native Language Center Archives. Fairbanks. [http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/tanacross/writing.html]

Holton, Gary & Rick Thoman. 2006. Tanacross Learners' Dictionary. Alaska Native Language Center. [Online: http://ankn.uaf.edu]

Isaac, Jerry. 1997. Tanacross Listening Exercises. Whitehorse: Yukon Native Language Centre.

Kari, James. 1991a. "Tanacross Writing System and Key Words (Draft)". Ms., Alaska Native Language Center Archives, Fairbanks.

______. 1991b. "Tanacross Stem List". Ms., Alaska Native Language Center Archives, Fairbanks.

Leer, Jeff. 1982. "Issues in Tanacross Orthography". Ms., Alaska Native Language Center Archives, Fairbanks.

McRoy, Nancy. 1973. "Beginning Tanacross Dictionary". Ms., Alaska Native Language Center Archives. Fairbanks.

Paul, Gaither. 1980. Stories for My Grandchildren. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center.

Scollon, Ronald. 1979. "Tanacross lexical file". Ms, Alaska Native Language Center Archives. Fairbanks.

Solomon, Irene. 1994. Tanacross Athabaskan Language Lessons. Whitehorse: Yukon Native Language Centre.

Solomon, Irene. 1996. Tanacross Listening Exercises. Whitehorse: Yukon Native Language Centre.

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