Bone 1
Stress and Vowel Length in Milluk: In Milluk, which syllable or syllables of a word are stressed is a stylistic matter. Even though Melville Jacobs probably understood that perfectly well, on a regular basis Jacobs phonetically transcribed which vowels he heard as stressed, if any, in each Milluk word that he transcribed. Lolly’s pronunciation of this word seems best to match where Jacobs indicated that both syllables were stressed, but that may mean that Jacobs actually heared both vowels in this word as long vowels. Notice that, in Lolly’s two pronunciations of this word in this interview segment, the vowel in the second syllable seems almost as long, or just as long, as the vowel in the first syllable. Our phonetic transcriptions here and our easy way to type this word are influenced by Jacobs’ decision to indicate vowel length only for the vowel in the first syllable of this word. The vowel length here has to do with stress because stressed vowels in English, and we think in Milluk, are not only louder, but also longer than the same vowels unstressed.
Instant Phonetic Englishization: lah_mahk
The Subtle Front K [ k̯ ]; It is hard to hear in this interview segment from early in the interview that the final consonant of this word is a Front K [ k̯ ], which is to say that it is a K with a little phonetic vowel [ i ], [ ɪ ], or semivowel [ y ] built into it. Later in the interview, Lolly says this word again and in a way that exaggerates the frontness of the Front K [ k̯ ] at the end of this word, so that it is obvious that it is what is technically called a ‘palatalized velar stop consonant’.
The Hanis Word in a Milluk Text: In the Milluk text titled “At death the heart went above and the belongings of the deceased were burned”, in Jacobs’ first (1939) volume of Coos texts, on page 95, when Annie Miner Peterson said the word as | lá·ʔmák̯ | twice, she was saying the matching Hanis word meaning ‘bone, bones’, not the Milluk word that she says in other Milluk texts.