Jeh Vocabulary

Proaunciation

While the following brief description of
Jeh sounds and symbols is intended to orient the student
to major features of pronunciation, it must be emphasized
that these and other details of authentic Jeh speech pro-
duction will only be accomplished with assistance of a Jeh
speaker and some practice .
1) Consonants

English speakers should note that voiceless
stops £, t^, ch, and k are rather tense but unaspira-
ted (no puff of air accompanies their release) in contrast
with Bh, th, and kh which are aspirated. Voiced stops b,
d, m, n, ng have the expected values, but nh represents a
palatal sound like Spanish n. The letter J_ is pronounced
33 in jean and ^ as in get . The letters 1, and r have
their English value.

Preglottalized and preaspirated varieties
of some of the above consonants will perhaps be some-
what novel. Glottal stop action preceding or during the

production of voiced stops, nasals, or laterals is symbol-
ized with an apostrophe before the consonants, e.g. *b ,
lAi lSi> 'tig . Plain initial semivowels are written w and
^ while the preglottalized ones are written J^w and J^.
Aspiration may precede nasals, 1 and w and y, for example,!
hmang 'to look through something*, hnep 'happy*, hnho
*sad*, hlai 'loincloth*, hwial *a dam*. The glottal stop,
when occuring word finally, is symbolized with a breve 2.
over the vowel with no other final consonant following.
The breve also marks short vowels under all other
conditions .
2) Vowels

Jeh vowels are of the following two classes:

Tense Register Lax Register

i u 1 u

I

e o e ^ o f

I

Notice with your Jeh teacher's assistance that the lax set
of vowels is more resonant and in some sense 'looser' than
the tense set. Further, note that each tense vowel is
pronounced with the tongue slightly lower in the mouth than
the corresponding lax vowel, e.g. e is lower than e^, a is
lower than a, etc. When both shortness and laxness occur
the vowel is marked by _ over the vowel, e.g., chol 'pig',
mak *axe* . Also when glottal stop toccurs with -lax vowel
word finally it is symbolized with a^ over the vowel with
no other final consonant following, e.g. llo *to vomit*,
hmo 'to dream* jl *hurt', chu 'to set in place'. As in
Vietnamese, a vowel symbol preceding another (final) i_ or
o is pronounced long, while a vowel preceding a final ^ or
u is short, e.g. ao 'shirt' (long a) contrasts with au
'I* (short a). The separation of two vowels by a hyphen

Indicates a syllable division and an intervening glottal
stop» e.g. kd"C$k 'cough'.

Tu-Sach Kgdn-Ngfl
Dan-T$c Thiiu-Sd Vift-Nam

Cudn 15
Ri^n 1

CHUCHIH DOTCfTAYH JEH

NGLf-VL/NG JEH

J EH VOCABULARY

Thong and E>wi^t Gradin
Edited by Patrick Cohen

Vi|n Chuyen-Khao Ngil-Hgc

Summer Institute of Linguistics

Huntington Beach, California

1979