Hat

Instant Phonetic Englishization: bit_hl_p!eh_wiss, for Lolly’s first version of the word, but bit_hl_beh_wiss, for her second version of the word. Annie’s version of the word is Lolly’s first version of the word which we actually do not get to hear Lolly really say just the way that she seems to have intended to say it.

In our actual transcript of the interview we have a transcription of [ pitɬpǽwɪs ] for the first time that Lolly Metcalf says the Milluk word in this interview segment and we have a transcription of [ mitɬpǽwɪs ] for the second time that she says the word, so you would be right to think that the phonetic transcriptions in our table of transcriptions here do not show exactly how Lolly says this word the two times that she says it.

We take liberties in transcribing exactly how she pronounces this word in the table of transcriptions in order not to misrepresent how we think that she intended to say this word. In other words, we have a two phonemic transcriptions, one for each of the two times that she says the word, instead of having actual phonetic transcriptions of how she really pronounced these two versions that she has of this word. We also have a very good idea of what had her pronouncing the first consonant of this word a bit off each time.

The real action in this word is with the ejective in the middle of the word that she pronounces with such a light ejective release in the first time that she says the word, so that the would-be ejective sounds like a voiceless un-aspirated stop [ p ] for that first time that she says the word, while she has what we call a heavy pronunciation of it as [ b ] the second time that she says the word.

If you want to hear Lolly actually say the ejective consonant [ pʼ ], listen to her say the Milluk word that means ‘water’ in the interview segment “Water”. There it is clearly an ejective, but there too, it is also a light pronunciation of one, rather than a robust pronunciation of an ejective.