Appendix:Ts'íts'àsh pronunciation

Ts'íts'àsh Language Navigation: Home, Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary, Orthography, Dialogue

The Ts'íts'àsh language has 12 consonants, 5 vowels, 3 tones, and no glides.

Standard Romanization

Letter	IPA	English example	Notes
a	a	father
b	b	bad
d	d	dog
e	e	bait
f	ɸ	similar to food	This consonant is bilabial, it is pronounced without bringing the lower lip near the upper teeth, unlike the English /f/.
i	i	machine
k	k	skill
k'	k’	—	Produced by holding your breath at the same time as making the above sound.
kh	x	loch (Scottish English)	Pronounced like the ch in German Buch.
o	o	moat
p	p	span
r	r ~ ɾ	—, battle	Pronounced like the rr in Spanish perro word-initially and word-finally and like the r in Spanish pero elsewhere.
s	s	see
sh	ʃ	sheep	Spelt ssh when doubled.
t	t	stop
t'	t’	—	Produced by holding your breath at the same time as making the above sound.
u	u	rude

Notes:

• No vowel letter may appear without a tone diacritic.
• If a fricative (f, s, sh or kh) follows an ejective (t' or k'), the ejective's apostrophe moves to the right of the fricative, for instance /t’s/ is spelt ts'.

Phonetics

Consonants

There are 12 consonants. A curiosity of Ts'íts'àsh is that it lacks nasals.

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop	voiceless	p	t		k
	voiced	b	d
	ejective		t' [t’]		k' [k’]
Fricative		f [ɸ]	s	sh [ʃ]	kh [x]
Trill/Tap			r [r ~ ɾ]

Any fricative can be syllabic, but there is no change in the romanization:

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Syllabic Fricative	f [ɸ̩]	s [s̩]	sh [ʃ̩]	kh [x̩]

Vowels

There are five pure vowels:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

There are also three diphthongs: ai [ai], au [au], and oi [oi].

Tones

Vowels take one of three tones:

	High	Low	Falling
i	í [i˥]	ì [˩]	î [˥˩]
u	ú [u˥]	ù [u˩]	û [u˥˩]
e	é [e˥]	è [e˩]	ê [e˥˩]
o	ó [o˥]	ò [o˩]	ô [o˥˩]
a	á [a˥]	à [a˩]	â [a˥˩]

The two parts of a diphthong bear separate tones, and syllabic fricatives do not bear tone.

Phonotactics

The maximal syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C). An onset can be either a single consonant or a stop followed by a fricative, and a nucleus can consist of either a vowel or a syllabic fricative. A single consonant or some consonant clusters can occur syllable-finally, however words can only end with ejective stops, fricatives or r.