Lesson 6 — Sounds — Combinations of vowels plus y and w — Part 3 — Combinations that English lacks  

As you've seen in previous lessons, combinations of vowel plus y and w often show up at the end of Samala words. Some of these combinations are familiar from English and others do not occur in English at all.

   Starts with:
a e i o u
 Ends with:     –y ay ey iy y oy uy
 –w aw ew iw w ow uw
ew y
iw w
 
Two-sound combinations of vowel plus y and w that Samala and English share
 
Combinations that include y or w automatically as part of the English vowel — we perceive these as single units in English
 
Combinations that do not occur in English at all

The easiest trick for pronouncing the w combinations ew, iw and w is to think of Elmer Fudd or a two-year-old who can't say "L."
English "hell" comes out as Samala hew "pelican." This bit of mimicry comes easily to most of us and it works much better for mastering ew than trying to figure out the phonetics involved. go down, come down elew
elew
ew elew "go down/come down" tongue
  elew "tongue" pelican
  hew "pelican"
hew
  ew "barn owl"  
Be careful not to pronounce this combination of letters like the English spelling of words such as "few" or "chew."
         
Here are words with iw and w combinations.
Again, remember Elmer Fudd or the two-year-old who can't say "L." Except for the glottalization, English "chill" comes out like Samala iw "paw (of an animal)."
iw iw "paw (of an animal)" paw (of an animal) to cost
  piw "to cost"
       
w aqw "to gut, ream out"    
  aqlw "word, speech, language" word, speech, language  
  cyw "kind, sort; edge, rim" crystal, quartz; glass
  xlw "crystal, quartz; glass"
You've already learned a word with the combination y —  hy "man, male." Here are a few others.
y y "wasp" wasp fox
  kny "fox"
  wy
"notch, groove"
 notch, groove
       
A pronunciation tip
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These combinations of vowel plus y and w ordinarily occur only at the ends of words.
As with some of the combinations you learned in the previous lesson, sometimes it's easier to pronounce these combinations when they're followed by another word starting with a vowel:
This happens when the next word is the article ha with the h deleted. The h of ha is regularly dropped in normal speech when ha comes right after a word that ends in a consonant.
So take the sequence ew in
s–elew ha aya "he goes down /descends the trail"  
When you drop the h of ha — because here it comes after the consonant w — phonetically this becomes
  se  le  wa  a  ya    
It's the same with      
  ma s–aqlw ha samala "the language of the Samala"
or "the Samala language"		    
Phonetically this becomes    
  mas   aq  l  wa sa  ma  la    

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