Ket Alphabet and Tones

            Ket has a phonemic inventory—that is, an inventory of sounds—that’s pretty different from what we have in English, and quite different from what most people are used to.  In our discussions on this blog we’ll be using the following alphabet for the Ket language, developed by Vajda et al. (2014)

ətn ostɨʁanbes diriŋbetn! (We write in Ket!)

Ket Letter with Variants	Example (“Is for…”)	English Meaning of Example
Aa [æ, a, ɑ]	A:t	“I”
Bb [b]	Bə:n	“No, not”
Dd [d] *In between vowels /d/à[ ɾ] represented by “r”.  See US English “butter”	Dɯ:l	“Child”
Ee [e, ɛ]	E’	“Yes”
ə [ə, ʌ, ɤ]	ətn	“We”
Gg [ɣ, g] *Intervocalic/word-final and postvocalic pre-obstruent allophones of /k/	Tag(im) [taɣ(im)] Tìg [tìɣ] qɔgd [qɔgdi]	“(It is) white” “Swan” “Autumn”
Hh [h]	Hɯna	“Small”
Ii [i]	I:m	“Pine nut”
ɯ [ɯ]	ɯ:n(am)	“two (of them)”
Jj [j]	Jelok	“Yelogui” (a river of Central Siberia)
Kk [k]	Ku’	“Soot, embers”
Ll [tɬ, l, ɬ] *Word-initial [tɬ] *Intervocalic [l] *Word-final [ɬ]	La’q [tɬa’q] Allel [al:e ɬ]	“Selkup” “female family guardian spirit”
Mm [m]	Mamul	“Milk” lit. “Breast-water”
Nn [n]	Na’n	“Flatbread made from dried lily bulb” Nowadays made from bread flour.
Ŋŋ [ŋ]	Ba’ŋ	“Earth”
Oo [o, ɔ]	O:p	“Father, Dad”
Pp [p] *Word-final allophone of /b/	Ap	“My”
Qq [qχ, ʁ, q]	Qu’ [qχu’] Aqta(m) [aʁta(m)] lә̄q [tɬә̄’q]	“Mouth of river” “(It is) good” “Animal pelts”
Rr [ɾ] *intervocalic allophone of /d/	Kire	“this”
Ss [s]	Súùl	“Sled”
Tt [t] *allophone of /d/	Ti:p	“dog”
Uu [u]	U:	“You”
Vv [v] *intervocalic allophone of /v/	Ovaŋ	Parents

            Ket also has four tones that we should be aware of.  Just like in Chinese, a word’s meaning can change if you get the tone wrong—so be careful!  Also, tone is lost before suffixes, so in longer words we usually don’t use our tones, at least as prominently:

High Even	Qo:j E:n E:s E: A:t	“uncle, aunt” “now” “sky god” “iron” “I”
Glottalized	Qo'j E’n E’s E’ A’t	“wish” “pine trees” “wooden nail” “Yes!” “bone, body part (coll. Relative)”
Rising-Falling	Qóòj	“neighboring”
Falling	Qòj	Bear
No tone or marker	D-(qoj)-olboksibed	“I get turned into (a bear)” (a phrase that could in fact be conceivably used by a Ket shaman!)

            Now that we have the basics of Ket pronunciation down, let’s get to the fun part.