Voiceless lateral fricative

[David Robertson]

Hi, Leanne,

The symbol for the voiceless lateral fricative (nowadays most often
called "barred L" by linguists in N. America) was invented by Le Jeune two
or three years after he debuted his Chinuk Wawa shorthand.  Let me write it
as capital L here.  He used it pretty consistently, for example in the word
styuiL 'pray, prayer' and piLti 'thick'.  Interestingly he did not abandon
his already-established favored spellings with tl, like patl 'full' and
tlus 'good'.

The list of sounds you reproduce from his 1924 book, like "wet l" and so
on, is more or less incomprehensible to a present-day linguist.  Zvjezdana
Vrzic in a 1998 Salish conference paper discusses these, concluding that
some seem to correspond to "barred L" while others are indeterminable.

--Dave R

To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!