Inuit Language Phonology
Following standard notation, phonemes are written between two slashes, e.g. /p/; and phonetic transcriptions are written between square brackets, e.g. .
This article is about the phonology of the Inuit language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Inuktitut dialects of Canada.
Most dialects have fifteen consonants and three vowel qualities (with phonemic length distinctions for each). While the Inupiatun and Qawiaraq dialects have retroflex consonants, retroflexes have otherwise disappeared in all the Canadian and Greenlandic dialects.
Read more about Inuit Language Phonology: Vowels, Consonants
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)