Revised practical orthography for Chinuk-wawa at Grand Ronde

[Dave Robertson]

Lhush san,

As some of you learned at our Chinuk Lu7lu this weekend, there have been a few little changes in the way Chinuk-wawa is written at Grand Ronde, Oregon.  These changes are designed to make the alphabet easier to use.  They're based on experiences with teaching actual Chinuk-wawa language classes, and I feel they will be quite a help to all of us.

Essentially, some letters that look odd to North American eyes (the "c" with a wedge or hacek over it, the "lambda" with a bar through it, etc.) have been replaced with equivalents derived from the English alphabet when possible.

Letters that have no equivalents in English have been kept; for example, the "l" with a bar through it is still used for a voiceless lateral.

Overall, these changes make the alphabet much more similar to our e-mail phonetics for Chinuk-wawa.  Nice convergence!

So, we now have:

ch    as in English "chip"
c'h or ch' for the ejective version of that sound

e     for both the vowel sound in English "bet" and that in "hey"

i     for both the vowel sound in English "bit" and that in "tipi"

sh     as in English "ash"

t+barred "l" (tlh or tL in email writing) for barred lambda
t'lh or t'L or tL' or tl' for the ejective version of it

ts     as in English "its"
t's or ts' for the ejective version

u    for both the vowel sounds of "Lulu" and "cook"

ae   for the vowel sound in "cat" (rarely used!)

dj    for the "j" sound of "Jeff" (rarely used!)

LhaXayEm,
Dave














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