Tolowa phonology

As with many Athabaskan languages, Tolowa features contrasting aspirated, unaspirated, and ejective stops, as well as contrasting vowel length and nasality. Tolowa is not fully tonal, but instead has a pitch accent. This is typical of the Pacific Coast Athabaskan languages.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar			Palatal	Velar		Glottal
			plain	fricated	retroflex		plain	lab.
Occlusive	unaspirated	p	t			tʃ	k	kʷ	ʔ
	aspirated		tʰ			tʃʰ
	ejective		tʼ	tsʼ	ʈʂʼ	tʃʼ	kʼ	kʷʼ
Continuant	voiceless		ɬ	s	ʂ	ʃ	x	xʷ	h
	voiced		l				ɣ
Nasal	plain	m	n
	glottalized	mˀ	nˀ
Approximant	plain					j		w
	glottalized					jˀ		wˀ

/ɬ/ is affricated to /tɬ/ after vowels. /j/ is nasalized (/j̃/) after nasal vowels.

Vowels

		Front		Central		Back
		short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	oral	i	iː			u	uː
	nasal	ĩ	ĩː			ũ	ũː
Close-mid		e	eː	ə
Open	oral			a	aː
	nasal			ã	ãː

Tolowa vowels have some degree of allophonicity. /u/ and /o/ are in free variation; /ɔ/ is an allophone of /a/ after palatals and velars; /ə/ is raised to /ɨ/ near palatals and to /ʉ/ before velars, and is nasalized (/ə̃/) before nasal consonants. In addition, Tolowa has three diphthongs: [ai], [au], and [ui].

Alphabet

Syllables are usually separated with an en dash (-) for clarity. The 1997 Tolowa Dee-niʼ alphabet (below) replaces the special characters ą, į, ɨ, ł, ų, and ʉ with a~, i~, lh, u~ and v, respectively. Note that the distinction between ɨ and ʉ is lost.

Tolowa Dee-niʼ alphabet

Spelling	a	aa	a~	aa~	b	ch	chʼ	d	dr	e	ee	g	gh	gw	h	i	ii	i~	ii~	kʼ	krʼ	l	lh	m	n	p	s	sh	sr	t	t’	trʼ	tsʼ	u	uu	u~	uu~	v	w	x	xw	y	ʼ
Phoneme	a	aː	ã	ãː	p	tʃʰ	tʃʼ	t	tʃ	e	eː	k	ɣ	kʷ	h	i	iː	ĩ	ĩː	kʼ	kʷʼ	l	ɬ	m	n	pʰ	s	ʃ	ʂ	tʰ	t’	ʈʂʼ	tsʼ	u	uː	ũ	ũː	ə	w	x	xʷ	j	ʔ

External links

• Tolowa language