Notes on Pronunciation
‣ 2 B, D, and J are not like any English phonemes. Be sure not to pronounce SENĆOŦEN consonants B, D, and J like the English letters ‘b,’ ‘d,’ and ‘j.’ Listen to the examples carefully and practice the ejective pop that is characteristic of B, D, and J.
‣ 3 Diphthongs in the SENĆOŦEN alphabet are each two sounds written with one symbol. The SENĆOŦEN alphabet reliably matches the consonant phonemes of the language. However, be aware that the symbols for diphthongs represent two phonemes each.
The SENĆOŦEN spelling system does not distinguish between /əy/ and /ay/. Following English, the symbol for both is Í. As it happens, the difference between /əy/ and /ay/ has what linguists call a low functional load. That means there are no words that depend on this difference, so one symbol for both works most of the time, but it obscures the original pronunciation.
The diphthong symbol Ⱥ represents a sequence of two sounds /ey/. This symbol also follows the English pattern. In English, we think of sounds like the one at the end of ‘stay’ as a single vowel—a long ‘a.’ But this is actually a diphthong. Say the English word ‘stay’ very slowly and notice that at the end your tongue glides up and ends in an /i/, or ‘ee’, or I sound. This is represented in terms of phonemes as /stei/ or /stey/ with the final /y/ representing the glide to the /i/ position in the mouth. So the SENĆOŦEN word STȺ ‘canoe race’ sounds exactly like the English word ‘stay.’ The fact that Ⱥ is a diphthong will be important in later discussions.
‣ 4 A and Á represent the same phoneme. The vowel A occurs only before one of the uvular consonants: Ḵ, K, Ḱ, ₭, X, X̱. The vowel Á never occurs before those consonants. This again reflects the influence of English on the SENĆOŦEN writing system. In English, the vowels in words like ‘pat’ and ‘pet’ are distinct. These vowel sounds occur in SENĆOŦEN, but they are not distinct. We get the sound as in ‘pat’ only before those uvular consonants. And only some native speakers have that vowel in that position.
‣ 5 The E vowel is the neutral vowel linguists call schwa and represent as /ə/. This vowel usually sounds like the vowels in English ‘above’. It always sounds like the second vowel in English ‘above’ when it is stressed. But when it is unstressed and before Ȼ, Q, Ḱ, ₭, W̱, or X̱ (phonemically /kʷ, k̕ʷ, qʷ, q̕ʷ, xʷ, x̣ʷ/), it sounds more like the vowel in the English word ‘put.’ This occurs because those consonants are all produced with the lips rounded. When E is unstressed and before those rounded consonants, the lip rounding spreads to the E, too.
‣ 6 Stressed vowels are produced a little louder, longer, and stronger than other vowels in the word. In the English word ‘upper,’ the first vowel is stressed, and in the word ‘above,’ the second vowel is stressed. In English, the stressed vowel is not marked—you just have to know it. Stress is not completely predictable in English and this causes difficulty for those learning English as a second language.
In the SENĆOŦEN alphabet, stress is also not marked, but the situation is not as difficult as for English. In general, if there is one A, Á, I, O, or U in the word, that one is the stressed vowel. You can just look at a word like SENĆOŦEN and know that it is the second vowel—the O—that is stressed. If the word has only E vowels, it is often a good guess to stress the second E from the end. You may already know the word EWE ‘no.’ In this word, the first E is the second E from the end, so it is stressed. In the word EȽTENEṈ ‘berry’, you can correctly guess that it is the second E that is stressed.
But sometimes your guess will be wrong, because stress is not completely predictable in SENĆOŦEN. The word EWENE ‘nothing,’ for example, has three E vowels, but in this word, it is the first E that is stressed. Sometimes a word has more than one A, Á, I, O, or U. In such cases, it is usually the last A, Á, I, O, or U that takes the stress. But these are just rules of thumb and not one hundred percent reliable. In this book, when new words are introduced for the first time, the stressed vowel will be underlined to help with correct pronunciation.
‣ 7 Vowel reduction is a feature of both English and SENĆOŦEN. In English, when a vowel becomes unstressed, it reduces to schwa. For example, in the English word ‘photograph,’ the main stress is on the first ‘o’ and it sounds like /o/. But when a suffix is added as in ‘photography,’ stress ends up on the second ‘o’ and the sound of the first ‘o’ reduces to schwa—/ə/ phonetically, a sound like E in the SENĆOŦEN alphabet.
SENĆOŦEN works much like English in this case. Certain suffixes in SENĆOŦEN take the stress away from the stem and cause the stem A, Á, I, O, or U vowel to reduce to E. A good example of this is W̱SÁNEĆ ‘Saanich people and territory.’ Add the ‑OŦEN suffix meaning ‘mouth, language’ to get SENĆOŦEN. The Á reduces to E when it loses the stress to the suffix. (The W̱ of W̱SÁNEĆ is a prefix indicating a location. See §56.2 about this prefix.) Here is another example: add the ‘tens’ suffix ‑ȽŚÁ¸ to ṈOS ‘four’ to get ṈESȽŚÁ¸ ‘forty.’ Here the O reduces to E when the suffix is added taking away the stress.
This kind of vowel reduction is very common in SENĆOŦEN. You should be aware of it when you learn new words and new suffixes in later sections of this book.
‣ 8 E deletion happens when stress is shifted to a suffix. While vowels A, Á, I, O, or U reduce to E when unstressed, E becomes deleted when a suffix takes stress away from the stem. If you have read point 7, above, you have already seen an example of this: the E of W̱SÁNEĆ becomes lost when adding the ‑OŦEN suffix to get SENĆOŦEN. Here the original Á reduces to E while the original E deletes. An E will also drop if it is preceded by another vowel. For example, the E of the ‑ET ‘transitive’ suffix is dropped if the ‘benefactive’ suffix ‑SI precedes it. Add the ‑SI suffix to QENET ‘look at it’ to get QENSIT ‘look at for someone.’ Here the ‑SI suffix comes between the root QEN and the suffix ‑ET. The E of the suffix drops next to the I.
‣ 9 E insertion occurs to keep two consonants apart. It most often is found when one or both of the consonants is L, M, N, Ṉ, or their glottalized versions. When the I of MIW̱ET ‘shake something’ moves rightward with the ‑EṈ passive suffix added (see the point below on metathesis), the expected word would be *MW̱ITEṈ. But an E must be inserted between the M and the W̱, so MEW̱ITEṈ is the correct form. Another example of E insertion occurs sometimes in words like EȽTÁLṈEW̱. This word is sometimes pronounced with an E inserted between the L and the Ṉ to produce EȽTÁLEṈEW̱.
‣ 10 ͸ or EY¸ reduces to I¸ when unstressed. This is really a special type of E deletion (see note 8, above), though it does not appear that way in the spelling system. Words that have an unstressed Í such as ŦEḴ͸ /θə́qəy̕/ are usually pronounced ŦEḴI¸ /θə́qiʔ/. The phonemic representation makes it clear what is happening: the unstressed /ə/ drops and the /y̕/ becomes vocalic /iʔ/. Native speaking elders will alternate between these two pronunciations. ŦEḴ͸ is the older pronunciation not used any longer by younger speakers. This similarity of the SENĆOŦEN spellings has reinforced the language change.
‣ 11 U¸ or EW¸ reduces to U¸ when unstressed. This is also a special type of E deletion. The spelling system does not consistently distinguish these two pronunciations. For example, SĆU¸ÁT ‘clever’ is phonemically /sčəw̕ét/. All native speaking elders pronounce it this way, but sometimes they will drop the /ə/, and, just as the /y̕/ becomes /iʔ/ (see point 10, above), the /w̕/ here becomes /uʔ/. So /sčəw̕ét/ becomes /sčuʔét/. The SENĆOŦEN spelling system does not distinguish these two pronunciations.
‣ 12 Y ~ Ć /y/ ~ /č/ alternation refers to the situation of a sound that appears sometimes as /y/ and sometimes as /č/. This is usually obscured by the system of spelling diphthongs as single letters. For example, ĆȺ ‘work’ is phonemically /čey/ (see the point on diphthongs, above). When the ‑ÁL¸ṈEN ‘want to’ suffix is added, the final /y/ appears as /č/: ĆEĆÁL¸ṈEN /čəčél̕ŋən/ ‘want to work.’ As another example take HÍ ‘quit, finish,’ which is phonemically /hay/. When the ‑ET transitive suffix is added we get HOĆET /háčət/ ‘quit doing something.’ It is not entirely predictable when /y/ will occur or when /č/ will occur. It does not always happen with the addition of a suffix, and it is not always triggered by a change in stress placement. One situation where it does seem predictable is in the ‘actual’ aspect (§42). When the /č/ form appears in the nonactual, the /y/ form regularly appears in the actual. Here is a pair of words as an example: ĆḴEĆE¸ / čqə́čəʔ/ ‘catch, harvest’ and ĆḴȺ¸YE¸ /čqéy̕əʔ/ ‘catching, harvesting.’ And one more example: DÁĆEK / t̕éčəq̕ / ‘be angry’ and D͸K /t̕ə́y̕q̕/ ‘being angry.’ In both examples, there is a vowel change and the /č/ appears as /y̕/ in the actual/continuative (‑ing) form of the word.
‣ 13 U (W) ~ Ȼ /w/ ~ /kʷ/ alternation seems to be basically the same phenomenon as the /y/ ~ /č/ alternation described in the preceding point. This alternation is also obscured by the spelling of diphthongs as single letters. The environment for this change is also apparently not predictable, though /w̕/ does regularly occur in the ‘actual’ aspect (§42). Here is an example of the change with the ‘actual’: ĆOȻEṈ /čákʷəŋ/ ‘be used’ and ĆO¸EU¸EṈ¸ /čəʔáw̕əŋ̕/ ‘being used.’ Here is an example where the alternation seems particularly unpredictable: SḴEȻEṈ /sqə́kʷəŋ/ ‘anything baked’ and SḴEUEN /sqə́wən/ ‘baking pan.’
‣ 14 The glottal stop is not a distinctive phoneme in English, but it is in SENĆOŦEN. In English, it occurs in a few places such as in the middle of the word ‘uh-oh.’ But the glottal stop is an important consonant in SENĆOŦEN as it is in many languages of the world. Dave Elliot was aware that the glottal stop was important in SENĆOŦEN, so he included it in the alphabet. But, being oriented toward English, he considered it just some kind of a ‘break,’ so he used the comma to symbolize it. Glottal stop, however, is a consonant in SENĆOŦEN just as much as P or T or any of the others. For P, the airflow is stopped at the lips. For T, the airflow is stopped at the ridge just behind the upper teeth. For ¸ (the glottal stop) the airflow is stopped in the throat at the vocal cords.
In standard English, the presence of a glottal stop is predictable. A word beginning with a stressed vowel, like ‘apple,’ typically has an automatic glottal stop in front of it in English. Try saying ‘the apple’ in English and you can probably hear the glottal stop appear between the two words.
The SENĆOŦEN spelling system assumes a general form of the English rule that words beginning with a vowel have a glottal stop before them. So, the SENĆOŦEN spelling system does not mark the glottal stop if it is the first consonant of a word.
It is easy to find evidence for the glottal stop at the beginning of words even for native speakers of English. Here are two common words: IȽEN ‘eat’ and OX̱ ‘go there.’ These are phonemically /ʔíɬən/ and /ʔáx̣ʷ/. The glottal stop is there, but, as a native speaker of English, you may not notice it until the word occurs in a different form.
Here are two examples of evidence for the glottal stop at the beginnings of words. To make the noun meaning ‘food,’ add the S‑ noun-forming prefix to IȽEN /ʔíɬən/ and you get S¸IȽEN /sʔíɬən/ not just *SIȽEN */síɬən/. The glottal stop shows clearly when the prefix is added. To get the ‘actual/continuative’ (‑ing) form of many words, copy the first consonant and vowel of the word (see §42). So OX̱ /ʔáx̣ʷ/ ‘go there’ becomes O¸EX̱ /ʔáʔəx̣ʷ/ ‘going there.’ Here the glottal stop is copied just like any other consonant.
The glottal stop can make an important difference in the meaning of a word. For example, take the word for ‘eat’ IȽEN. To get ‘eating,’ you add a glottal stop after the stressed vowel: I¸ȽEN. These two words, IȽEN and I¸ȽEN sound different and mean different things, and the difference all depends on that glottal stop.
‣ 15 Two adjacent glottal stops become one. Usually in SENĆOŦEN, when two identical consonants occur next to each other, both are pronounced. For example, EMETTW̱ ‘let someone sit’ is composed of EMET ‘sit’ and ‑TW̱ ‘causative.’ When the suffix is added, it produces a word with two T’s together, and both T’s are pronounced. Two consonants together are even pronounced at the beginning of a word as in BBÁ¸ȻEṈ¸ ‘floating.’ Both B’s are pronounced with no vowel between them. The glottal stop, however, is the exception. Whenever two glottal stops come together, they reduce to one—only one is pronounced. For example, when SU¸ comes before any word beginning with a glottal stop, only one glottal stop is pronounced as in NE SU¸ IȽEN /nə suʔ ʔíɬən/ ‘so I ate’ becomes /nəsuʔíɬən/.
‣ 16 Contraction is when two words that come next to each other in a sentence combine in fluent, casual pronunciation. In English, for example, the sentence ‘I want to go’ is pronounced in fluent, casual pronunciation like ‘I wanna go.’ The ‘want’ and ‘to’ combine in pronunciation with the ‘t’ of both ‘want’ and ‘to’ dropping out. Notice that grammatically the ‘to’ is more associated with ‘go’—‘to go.’ but it falls back toward ‘want’ in the fluent, casual pronunciation. This type of contraction occurs frequently with the small grammatical particles in fluent, casual SENĆOŦEN.
Contraction happens in SENĆOŦEN when the short grammatical words called particles come next to each other in a sentence. A common one is when the Ȼ (/kʷ/) particle, which introduces Ȼ clauses (see §46) is followed by a word beginning with the ‘your’ prefix EN¸‑ (/ʔən̕‑). This combination sounds like ȻEN¸. The glottal stop at the beginning of the ‘your’ prefix drops similar to the way the ‘t’ drops in English ‘wanna.’ Ȼ clauses also usually involve the S‑ prefix, which also attaches to make it ȻEN¸S. This is sometimes spelled like this just as ‘want to’ in English is sometimes spelled ‘wanna.’ In this book, just as in the SENĆOŦEN dictionary, we want to keep the grammatical structure clear. So we will always spell out this and similar contractions.
‣ 17 Metathesis is when two sounds in a word switch places. This happens spontaneously in SENĆOŦEN in a number of cases. The suffixes ‑EṈ ‘passive,’ ‑SET ‘reflexive,’ ‑TEL ‘reciprocal,’ ‑ES ‘third person subject,’ and all of the subordinate subject suffixes (§17) cause a root vowel to switch with a following consonant for some roots. For example, the word meaning ‘cut something’ ȽIȾET becomes ȽȾITEṈ ‘be cut’ when the ‑EṈ ‘passive’ suffix is added. The IȾ becomes ȾI. This occurs only with some roots. See §34 for details.
Metathesis is also one way that marks the ‘actual’ aspect. For example, Ṯ₭ET ‘stick something on’ becomes ṮE₭T ‘sticking something on.’ This is covered in detail in §42.3.
‣ 18 H deletion happens when an H consonant is immediately preceded by W̱ or Ƚ. This is most commonly seen when the ‘you’ pluralizer HÁLE immediately follows SW̱ ‘you subject’. So instead of SW̱ HÁLE we hear SW̱ ÁLE (See §1). Another example is when the prefix ȻȽ- ‘already’ combines with the stem HIŦ ‘long time.’ This can be pronounced ȻȽHIŦ ‘long time ago,’ but in fluent casual speech it is usually pronounced ȻȽIŦ with the H deleted.
‣ 19 H insertion happens when an H consonant is inserted between a stem and a lexical suffix. If a stem ends in a vowel and the suffix begins with a vowel an H gets inserted between them. For example, the suffix meaning ‘container’ is ‑ÁLE. When added to SJOṈEȽ ‘trash,’ we get SJOṈEȽÁLE ‘trash can.’ But when added to TÁLE ‘money’ (with a Ś- ‘thing for’ prefix), we get ŚTELEHÁLE ‘purse, wallet.’
‣ 20 S- deletes after Ć-. When the Ć- prefix meaning ‘have,’ as in ĆTÁLE SEN ‘I have money,’ is attached to a word beginning with the S- prefix, the S- prefix will usually drop. For example, add Ć- to S¸IȽEN ‘food’ (which is IȽEN ‘eat’ with the S- prefix) to get ƸIȽEN ‘have food’ as in ƸIȽEN SEN ‘I have food.’ Note that this happens only with the the S- prefix. If the root begins with S, that S does not drop. For example, SÁ¸WEN ‘box lunch’ is ĆSÁ¸WEN ‘have a box lunch.’ The initial S of the root SÁ¸WEN does not drop.
‣ 21 Initial S- deletion occurs in fluent native speakers’ narratives. This is only the S- prefix that gets deleted and only occasionally in fluent, casual speech. The deletion typically occurs at the beginning of a sentence or clause. Some of the recorded elders drop the S- more than others.
‣ 22 Glottalized sonorants are the consonants in the last row of the chart on page 2—L¸, M¸, N¸, Ṉ¸, U¸, and Y¸ /l̕, m̕, n̕, ŋ̕, w̕, y̕/. These sounds never occur at the beginning of a word; they frequently occur after vowels and at the ends of words. The /y̕/ is often obscured in the spelling when it follows /ə/ or /a/. In these cases—/əy̕/ and /ay̕/—the resulting diphthong is spelled ͸. It also can be obscured when following /e/ when it is spelled Ⱥ¸. See point 2, above, for more on these diphthongs.
‣ 23 Glottalized sonorant breaking occurs when a glottalized sonorant consonant “breaks” into a glottal stop and plain sonorant consonant. The plain sonorant consonants are those in the second to last row of the chart of consonants. This happens when a glottalized sonorant occurs between vowels. It is as if the glottalization were drawn toward the stressed vowel. If stress is on the preceding vowel, L¸, M¸, N¸, Ṉ¸, U¸, and Y¸ /l̕, m̕, n̕, ŋ̕, w̕, y̕/ become /ʔl, ʔm, ʔn, ʔŋ, ʔw, ʔy/. If stress is on the following vowel, they become /lʔ, mʔ, nʔ, ŋʔ, wʔ, yʔ/.
‣ 24 Glottalized sonorant spelling varies in some SENĆOŦEN material because of this variability in pronunciation. For example, between vowels, /l̕/ may be spelled L¸ or ¸L or even L¸L. Similarly, /w̕/ may be spelled U¸W as in /ɬéw̕əlŋəxʷ/, which may be spelled ȽÁU¸ELṈEW̱ or ȽÁU¸WELṈEW̱.
‣ 25 Double O appears in about 100 words in SENĆOŦEN. The OO is always pronounced long. You produce the O sound, then hold it a little longer. Listen to the recordings of the elders who spoke SENĆOŦEN as their first language to hear it. It appears in some common native SENĆOŦEN words like OOȽ ‘go aboard,’ BOOṈ ‘swell up,’ ḰOOL ‘soft,’ and TOOL ‘go out over deep water.’ It occurs in a very common ending for women’s names as ‑OOT. And it occurs in a number of words borrowed from English: COO ‘car,’ COON ‘corn,’ NOOS ‘nurse,’ WOOF ‘wharf.’ Notice that in each of the borrowed words, the English has ‘r.’ SENĆOŦEN has no ‘r’ sound so the native speaking elders just lengthened the vowel to substitute for the ‘r.’
‣ 26 U is rare as a stressed vowel. All words with a stress U are borrowed in SENĆOŦEN. That means that they originated in another language and have been integrated long ago into SENĆOŦEN as native words. Here are a few: CEPU ‘coat,’ CEŚU ‘pig,’ CUC ‘cook,’ CUL ‘gold,’ LEMETU ‘sheep,’ MUSMES ‘cow,’ PUC ‘book,’ PUS ‘cat,’ PUT ‘boat,’ SCUL ‘school,’ STUP ‘stove,’ and ŚUȻE ‘sugar.’ The source of these words is Chinook Jargon, which got them from English or French. The source of these is pretty obvious. There is one word with a stressed U that does not come from Chinook Jargon: ṮUṮE¸ ‘less, few.’ This word was probably borrowed from the Klallam language, where it means ‘small.’
‣ 27 C is rare in SENĆOŦEN. All words with the plain C in SENĆOŦEN are borrowed from other languages—usually Chinook Jargon or English—and integrated into SENĆOŦEN as native words. Here are a few: ÍSCLIM ‘ice cream,’ ICS ‘hen’s egg,’ CEPU ‘coat,’ CEŚU ‘pig,’ CUC ‘cook,’ CUL ‘gold,’ COLE ‘collar,’ CONSEL ‘councilor,’ CÁNTI ‘candy,’ PÍSECEL ‘bicycle,’ PUC ‘book,’ SCUL ‘school,’ and STOCEN ‘sock.’ One case of C in the language does not have an obvious source: ȾICȾEC ‘wagon, buggy.’ This comes from Chinook Jargon, which got it from the Salishan language Cowlitz. In Cowlitz, ȾIC means ‘squeak’ (Kinkade 2004). The word ȾICȾEC has the ‘characteristic’ reduplication (§59) to give it the meaning ‘thing characterized by squeaking.’
‣ 28 Intonation is the change in the pitch of the voice across a sentence. In English, for example, questions usually have a gradually rising intonation. In SENĆOŦEN, all sentences have a gradually falling pitch. Questions do not rise in pitch as they do in English.
In SENĆOŦEN, a word can be emphasized to show great distance, time, or quantity by pronouncing the vowel very long with a slightly raised pitch. For example, one way to say that someone went way, way far out on the water is to use the word YÁ¸ ‘go’ and the word Á¸ŦȻEȽ ‘out over open water,’ but lengthen and raise the pitch of any of the vowels: YÁÁÁ¸ Á¸ŦȻEȽ.
Another way of emphasizing a word in SENĆOŦEN is to pronounce the word a little louder with a very quick drop in pitch. This is usually used in story-telling to emphasize a sudden or strong action or something of surprisingly great size. For example, AN¸ U¸ ĆEḴ ȻSE SṮÁLEḴEM! ‘The monster was very big!’ Pronouncing the ĆEḴ ‘big’ a little louder with a sudden drop of pitch gives dramatic emphasis to the size of the monster.
‣ 29 For more technical details on the sounds of SENĆOŦEN see Montler 1986 and Leonard 2019.
‣ 30 Be careful with T’s. There are four T’s in the SENĆOŦEN alphabet: T, Ŧ, Ⱦ, and Ṯ. These stand for very different sounds and cannot be substituted for one another. Typos with these letters are common. It is very easy to accidentally substitute one for another. Be sure to check; you may be spelling an entirely different word than you intend.
‣ 31 Be careful with K’s. There are four K’s in the SENĆOŦEN alphabet: K, Ḵ, Ḱ, and ₭. These represent very different sounds and cannot be substituted for one another. Just as with the four T’s, typos are very common with the K’s because it is very easy switch one for another. Be sure to check; you may be spelling an entirely different word than you intend.