Alphabet and Sounds
Although some of the symbols may be unfamiliar, Klallam spelling is really much easier than English spelling. In Klallam each symbol generally stands for one sound, and each sound has one symbol. This is not true of English spelling where, for example, words like ‘enough,’ ‘cough,’ and ‘dough’ are spelled with letters that are either not pronounced at all or have an unexpected pronunciation.
The following is a list of all of the letters of the Klallam alphabet, shown in their alphabetical order:
ʔ a c c̓ č č̓ e ə h i k kʷ k̓ʷ l ɬ ƛ̓ m m̓ n n̓ ŋ ŋ̓ p p̓ q q̓ qʷ q̓ʷ s š t t̓ u w w̓ xʷ x̣ x̣ʷ y y̓
The following charts show the sounds of Klallam arranged according to where and how the sound is produced in the mouth. A chart in Appendix A gives the technical linguistic description of each Klallam sound.
