Vowels There are five vowel phonemes: ; is spelled 'e'. is phonetically , a
high central unrounded vowel, similar to the 'e' in the word 'roses' in English.
Articulation of vowels is reported to be even more open than the similar half open front vowel of French, but less open than the [æ] of English 'cat'. [a] is low central.
Suprasegmental phonemic contrasts Length is phonemic for vowels. A long vowel is marked by a pair of identical vowel letters. Some minimal pairs: • '''' 'to drink', '''' 'to chew'; • '''' 'to cook', '''' 'sown field'; • '''' 'looking for a place to get out of the rain', '''' 'walking around tending to things'. Stress accent is phonemic. The default position for word stress in Huichol is the penultimate syllable (the next to last syllable), as in Spanish and English. When a word has primary stress on the penult, the orthography does not mark it. When the primary stress of the word falls on a syllable other than the penult, the stress is marked with the acute accent (as in Spanish). When there is a need to mark stress on a long vowel, the acute accent is placed on the
second vowel letter. Minimal pairs showing phonemic syllable stress: •
tuaxa 'to shoot',
tuaxá 'oak'; • '''' 'close one's eyes', '''' 'butterfly'.
Consonants There are thirteen consonant phonemes. /t͡s/ has two allophones, the affricate, [ts] by default and the fricative, [s] when it immediately precedes another consonant. /h/, which Grimes (1955) groups with /w y/ for morphophonemic reasons, is phonetically the glottal voiceless fricative, [h]. The boldfaced symbols in parentheses are the symbols used in the Huichol orthography, where these differ from the linguists' symbols.
Articulation of consonants /k/ before /i/ is
aspirated. /k/ before /ɛ/ is
palatalized, hence the pronunciation of /kɛ/ is [kjɛ]. to "apicoalveolar affricate, fricative, and flap /t͡s r ɾ/ (the latter two with retroflex quality)". The description, "reverse flap" was not defined. By way of conjecture, it may mean that the tongue tip (apex) travels up and backward during the flap articulation instead of straight up or up and forward.
Syllable structure Syllables have one of the following structures (C = consonant, V = vowel, V^ = long vowel): CV; CV^; CVV (the two vowels differ in articulation), at least in the base form of words; in speech and sometimes in writing, the elision of vowels creates sequences in violation of these syllable canons. In syllables of the last type, the two vowels form a diphthong in which the first vowel is the most prominent. The language has a large number of diphthongs; both ascending diphthongs and descending diphthongs occur. Examples (period marks syllable boundary): • '''' 'to give'; • '''' 'to lend'; •
xei.ya 'to see'; •
xie.te 'bee' (the diphthongs are different in the initial syllables of '
and '). The sequences /wV/ are distinct from /uV/, likewise /yV/ is distinct from /iV/. /uV/ and /iV/ are diphthongs, and to form a valid syllable in Huichol, they must be preceded by a consonant.
Intonation Grimes (1959) investigated the affective use of intonation. == Orthography ==