Spelling & Pronunciation

The Alphabet

Acquiring literacy in Yaqui can present a particular challenge in that, unlike many modern languages, Yaqui has no single standardized writing system due to its historical focus on oral tradition over written texts and the still ongoing study of how its sound system exactly works. Multiple systems have developed to represent its sounds, including what we will call the Mexican system, which is based on Spanish spelling, the United States’ system, which is based on English spelling, and the academic system, which is used in linguistic studies and introduces some bespoke phonetic characters like č for ch and ʔ for the "glottal stop".

Because what exactly constitutes a letter and letter combination differs between Spanish and English, there is no universal Yaqui alphabet. This guide, rather, highlights the most commonly used letters and their pronunciations, using the U.S. system, as this project focuses on conserving U.S. Yaqui. Still, the Mexican system is provided below in order to encourage broader literacy and communication with the tribe in Mexico, and the academic system is included should the reader want to explore scholarly literature.

Early Yaqui writings, beginning in the 18th century by Jesuit missionaries, relied on Spanish spelling conventions but were irregular in comparison to modern spellings. For instance, wikichim ("birds") appeared as uikitzim, and itom ("us, our") as ytom. These antiquated, experimental spellings are not the focus here. Instead, this guide provides a practical introduction to the multiple modern methods used by native-speaking scholars and communities to write down the Yaqui language.

Consonants

Above to the far left are the consonants writtin in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a transcription system used by linguists to accurately record sounds. For the learner unfamiliar with IPA, To learn the consonants and their pronunciation, we will split them into three groups: the stop consonants, called so because one briefly stops airflow before releasing to pronounce them, the fluid consonants, called so because they allow air to flow while pronouncing them, and the combined consonants, called so because they are made using two parts of the mouth at the same time.

• The glottal stop is so called because one stops airlow in the "glottis", an area of the throat, and is crucial in Yaqui, as its absence can change a word's meaning. Words that start with a vowel in writing have an unwritten glottal stop before them, except in academic texts, where it may be written explicitly. For example, "baby", normal written aso’ola, is written ʔasoʔola.
• k, p, t in English are pronounced with a puff of air at the start of a word or before a stressed syllable (such as in king, repair, attack). While doing this will not make one incomprehensible, avoiding it is the more natural pronunciation.
• t is pronounced with the flat surface of the tongue, like in English, not the tip like in Spanish.

• The English v pronounced with the upper teeth pressed against the bottom lip is an acceptable pronunciation of v.

• bw is pronounced in Yaqui like a b with rounded lips, but making a b followed by a w is sufficiently understandable.
• ch, like k, p, t, is not pronounced exacly like a ch that appears at the start of a word or at the start of a stressed syllable (like in church, recharge), because this ch is pronounced with a puff of air, which is not as natural sounding in Yaqui.
• kt is not exactly like the ct in English, because while ct is a cluster of two consonants one after the other, kt in Yaqui is pronounced at once as a combined consonant. While this is the case, the English ct is an understandable pronunciation.

• Unlike in English, the length of a verb affects its meaning. Long consonants exist in English mainly across word boundries like in cat time.
• bw when lengthened is bbw, not bwbw.
• ch when lengthened is tch, not chch or cch. Because ch is the combination of t and the sh sound in shine, often ch in words in the combining form becomes t. For example, vicha becomes vit.
• Every other consonant besides r is lengthened by doubling the letter. Long r is elusive if used at all. For example, burro is borrowed as vúro, not vúrro.

• b, d, f, g as a rule do not appear in native words and are limited to recent loanwords, as older loanwords assimilate these sounds into v, l, p, w. For example, Dios ("God") became Lios or Lioh, although it is now common to just say Dios.
• The exception to this rule is g, which sometimes appears before o instead of w with some speakers, semingly due to influence from Spanish. For example, wo’i ("coyote") is go’i to some speakers.

Vowels

Yaqui has five distinct vowels, similar to those in Spanish: a, e, i, o, u. These vowels can also be lengthened by doubling them in writing, resulting in aa, ee, ii, oo, uu. Additionally, vowels can combine with any other vowel to form a combination, such as eo, ai, ua, etc. These long vowels and vowel combinations tend to have either a rising tone, with a low pitch on the first vowel and high pitch on the second, or a falling tone, with a high pitch on the first vowel and a low pitch on the second.

Syllables and Pitch Accent

In Yaqui, a syllable consists of a single vowel and may include a consonant before it. A combination of two vowels counts as two separate syllables.

Yaqui does not stress syllables like English does. In English, stress involves making a syllable longer, louder, and higher in pitch. In Yaqui, the prominence of a syllable is consistently marked mainly by pitch. There are two main pitch patterns in Yaqui: secondary pitch and initial pitch. A small number of words have irregular pitch patterns. In secondary pitch accent, the first syllable is low in pitch; the second syllable rises in pitch, and the pitch falls over the remaining syllables in the root word. In initial pitch accent, the first syllable starts with a high pitch; the pitch falls on the second syllable and rises again on the last syllable of the word.

• Single-syllable words always have initial pitch.
• Two-syllable words may have either pitch accent, but when they have initial pitch accent, both syllables are high pitched.
• Three-syllable words may have either pitch accent, with a high middle syllable in secondary pitch and a high first and second syllable in initial pitch.

In this guide, single-syllable words and words with secondary pitch will be unmarked. For words with initial pitch, the first high-pitched syllable will be marked with an acute accent (´). This system does not account for intonation, which refers to how pitch changes across a string of words like a phrase or sentence. While intonation is beyond the scope of this guide, it may affect pitch patterns, so some variation in examples may occur. Additionally, Yaqui pitch accent is still being studied, so differences along dialects and individual speakers may arise. For example, some speakers pronounce yoeme as yóeme, with the first and last syllables high. similarly, wáakas may be pronounced as waakas, with the middle syllable high. In some cases, however, pitch accent can change the meaning of a word. Consider these near-homophones:

When suffixes or prefixes are added, secondary pitch patterns can shift due to vowel shortening. For initial pitch, the high-pitched syllable usually remains stable. Let’s see how suffixation affects kaate and káate:

• When a suffix or prefix is connected to a root word with a long vowel, the vowel often shortens, and the accented syllable in the word may shift due to this shortening.
• Generally in initial pitch accent the pitch stays on the first syllable of the root regardless of suffixes and prefixes.
• With secondary pitch however, the vowel shortening that occurs with the adding of suffixes, prefixes and combining forms cause what was originally the third syllable to be accented. For example, Lios ("God") + nooki ("speech") = Liohnoki ("prayer").

Regardless of pitch accent and intonation, there are suffixes which never receive high pitch and one which always does.