| Pronunciation — Vowels | |
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| What a vowels is | |||
| Familiar vowels a, e, i, o and u | |||
"Barred
I" —  |
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| What a vowel is | |
| Samala has six vowels: the familiar a,
e, i, o,
and u plus
— called "Barred I." |
| If you'd like a rough definition, a vowel is one of the sounds indicated in English by the letters a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y . This doesn't really tell you what a vowel is, but it gives you a working idea. |
| A vowel is a sound in which you let the breath pass freely through your mouth and vocal cords. A vowel carries most of the sound volume and musical pitch of the word. You can sustain a vowel much longer than other sounds, which are all grouped together as consonants. |
| The vowels of Samala are written phonetically. For practical purposes that means they're often pronounced more like the vowels of Spanish (and many other languages) than like English. Spoken English has around a dozen different vowel sounds, all written with just six letters, so English spelling is especially confusing when it comes to vowels. |
| The five familiar vowels: a, e, i, o and u |
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— "Barred I"
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This sound is called "barred I,"
since it"s often written as
— an "I" with a
bar through it. Barred I
sometimes shows up as ï — an
I with two dots above it..  Hear
it. |
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Below you will see two different descriptions of how to pronounce barred I plus what you could substitute for it and still come reasonably close to pronouncing the sound correctly. It helps to look into a mirror as you try this. |
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Barred I is pronounced halfway in the mouth between i (English "ee") and u (English "oo"). Notice that when you pronounce u, you round your lips a little, while with i there's no rounding. | ||
| Try saying i (English "ee") and notice where your lips are; then try saying u (English "oo") without moving your lips. This produces a decent approximation of barred I, although it's really pronounced with the tongue a bit further forward in the mouth, giving it a slightly different quality. |
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 Listen
to the progression of these three vowel sounds: i
u |
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Try saying English "pot,"
then "putt," and finally "put." Notice
that you raise your jaw a little higher with each vowel, and then with "put"
you also round your lips. Say the same sequence of English words but try
not to round your lips with "put." This results in a word
that would be written pt
in Chumash. |
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| Listen
to the progression of these three vowel sounds: a uh
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You can also produce a passable
approximation of
by substituting the vowel of English "put" or "look."
Here's a series of English words written as if they were Chumash, to illustrate
this approximation: |
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| pil
"peel" |
lik
"leak" l k
"look"luk "Luke" |
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| Listen
for the difference in these three words: |
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 |
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pi |
"you" | |||
| p |
"to dip up, ladle" | |||
| pu | "hand, arm" | pu | w |
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| Examples of Words with "Barred I" | ||||
| t
|
"name" |  |
 |
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| w |
"deer" | |||
| mk |
"far; far away" | |||
| tasn |
"to be red" | |||
| n |
"fire" | tasn |
n |
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