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00:00 – Of the first lesson given by the central Washington state college as an introductory course in the reading and writing method in the Yakama Indian language. This particular writing method was developed by Alex Saluskin who is now deceased, he passed away two years ago. And Dr. Bruce Rigsby, an anthropologist linguist from the University of New Mexico. They worked for seven years developing this particular phonetic alphabet and Alex Saluskin compiled 1800 words of vocabulary which was the base for developing the 3400 word dictionary for the Yakama tribe which will be available and is being used as part of a text for this particular course given as an introductory literacy course in the Yakama Indian language. Now, this alphabet, which is a phonetic alphabet, will be used by several tribes. It will be adaptable to the other dialects which include the mid Columbia called the Wanapum, Wahluke, Wallula. In Oregon state, the Umatilla, Tenino, Warm Springs, Paiute, down to lower Columbia, (couldn’t discern), Rock Creek, White Salmon, which is part of the lower Columbia Klickitat. And in the inlands, the Klickitat, the northern collets which are called the Taitnapam, Nesqualli and Pshwanwapam, which includes Nanshuit, and Kittitas which is [Sahaptin] in Indian which is Kittitas.

2:39 – In the past few years on the Yakama reservation, there has been an awakening of interest among the Yakama people to preserve and maintain their native language by teaching it in the public schools to their children. This was a wish of Alex Saluskin when he began working on this dictionary. He was not doing it particularly for the Yakama tribe, he became interested when Dr. Rigsby began writing down the words he was teaching him in the oral language. He began to envision this writing method in the classrooms, local schools, and possibly throughout the state. Most language classes have been based on an oral approach because the language teacher and aids are uncertain as to how the Yakama language should be properly written. In the following pages, we present and use a Yakama practical alphabet that has been taught in several workshops on the Yakama reservation. The Yakama practical alphabet uses only common english letters and combinations of common english letters plus the apostrophe, the hyphen, and the underline. It can be typed on any standard typewriter although it is necessary to mark in the accent stress marks by hand but if you use a Selectric IBM Ball, the stress marks are on the script so you don’t have to mark it in by hand. However I realize not very many people can afford an IBM electric typewriter. In developing a practical alphabet for Yakama, strict attention is paid to the alphabetic principle. Each distinct sound must have it’s own letter, or special combination of letters, and each letter or special combination of letters must stand for one and only one distinct sound. The conventional English alphabet and writing system actually do not follow the alphabetic principle consistently. For example, the combination of five letters “ough”, in the five words bough, cough, enough, though, and through, in fact, stands for five different vowels and vowel plus consonant sounds. Undoubtedly, this sort of inconsistency is one of the reasons our children have so much trouble learning to read and write English in grade school. We have avoided these difficulties by following the alphabetic principle strictly in developing and designing a practical alphabet for writing Yakama. There are 26 letters in the standard English alphabet that are available for use in a Yakama practical alphabet but some of them stand for sounds that are not found in Yakama. In English for example, there are no native Yakama words that contain the sounds of the letters “b d f g r z” commonly stand for in English. On the other hand there are some sounds in Yakima that are not found in English. There are no English words that contain sounds like the beginning of the word [Sahaptin], ‘elbow’. [Sahaptin], ‘shoulder’. Or [Sahaptin], ‘head’. To the greatest extent possible we have used English letters to represent sounds that are identical or similar in Yakama. Nevertheless, this practical alphabet is a Yakama alphabet and it requires special explanation of some of its features before it can be read with ease and speed. We now turn to some of the distinctive features of the Yakama practical alphabet and writing system.

7:56 – There is an important difference in Yakima between hard and soft consonants. Compare the hard [Sahaptin] sound at the beginning of the [Sahaptin]. With a soft “ch” sound at the beginning of [Sahaptin], ‘new’. Or compare the “hard k glottal stop” sound in [Sahaptin], ‘bald eagle’. With a “soft k” [Sahaptin], ‘digging stick’. The hard consonants sound as though they were popped or exploded. Linguists call them glottalized consonants. It is easy to test whether or not a consonant in a particular word is a hard one or not by placing your index finger, [Sahaptin], on your Adams apple. If your Adams apple moves quickly when you pronounce the consonant. If it moves quickly, it is is hard one. If it doesn’t move quickly, it is a soft consonant. In the Yakama practical alphabet the hard consonants are indicated by placing the apostrophe after as in [Sahaptin]. The Yakama language also distinguishes between front and back k like sounds. Compare the “soft back k” sounds in [Sahaptin], ‘roan horse’, with the “soft k” sound in [Sahaptin], ‘bird’, or ‘creature’. Or compare the “soft back k” in [Sahaptin], ‘heavy’, with a “soft front k” sound in the english word ‘Cocoa’. The Sahaptin “back k” is pronounced further back in the rear of the mouth than in the English K. The Yakama front and back like sounds may also be either hard or soft. The word [Sahaptin], ‘horse’, begins with a “hard front k”. While [Sahaptin], ‘colt’ begins with a “hard back k”. There are K like sounds in Yakama that are pronounced with lips rounded as in the word [Sahaptin], ‘whistling’. They are spelled with the letter w following and they too maybe front or back, hard or soft. Other examples are given in the key to the Yakama practical alphabet. Yakama also has several H like sounds the first of them is a plain H, pronounced like the sound that begins with the English word hop. It is the sound that begins, [Sahaptin], ‘wind’. The other H like sounds  are not found in English. We use the word X to represent them because they are similar to the sound represented by the X letter in the classical greek and other European languages. The most common X type sound in Yakama is the back k as in [Sahaptin], ‘mallard duck’. The “back k” sound sounds fairly rough or harsh. The “front x” is not very frequent in Yakama. It is found at the end of [Sahaptin], it has a softer smoother sound. You tighten your throat and you whistle it through the back of your throat. The Yakama vowels may be either short or long in their pronunciation. Compare the second vowel sound in [Sahaptin], ‘he is riding’ with [Sahaptin], ‘he is dancing’. And note how the second vowel in [Sahaptin] takes longer to pronounce. Some Yakama words are spelled the same, they contain exactly the same consonants and vowels yet they differ slightly in pronunciation in that their stress patterns are different. The stress mark is placed directly above the most prominent or strongest vowel or word. As example of words that differ only in their stress patterns, consider first the two verb senetences, [Sahaptin], ‘he saw him’. [Sahaptin], ‘they saw him’. Note also [Sahaptin], ‘Canada Goose’, the stress is over the first a and [Sahaptin] with the stress over the second a which changes the meaning to ‘Maternal Uncle’, or your mother’s brother.

14:25 – I know you all have a copy of the alphabet. So what I will do is pronounce the words. “Short a” [Sahaptin], “long a” [Sahaptin], “soft ch” [Sahaptin], “hard ch” [Sahaptin], “H” [Sahaptin], “short i” [Sahaptin], “long i” [Sahaptin], “barred i” [Sahaptin], “soft k” [Sahaptin], “hard front k” [Sahaptin], “soft back k” [Sahaptin], “hard back k” [Sahaptin], “soft front k” [Sahaptin], “hard front kw” [Sahaptin], “soft back kw” [Sahaptin], “hard back kw” [Sahaptin], “L” [Sahaptin], “barred L” [Sahaptin], you can say [Sahaptin], “M” [Sahaptin], “N” [Sahaptin], “P” [Sahaptin], “hard P” [Sahaptin], “S” [Sahaptin], “Sh” [Sahaptin], “soft T” [Sahaptin], “hard T”, you pop that through your teeth. [Sahaptin]. “Soft T barred L”, [Sahaptin]. Remember how we drilled this? You make your T and your barred L sound separately, [Sahaptin]. “Hard TL sound”, [Sahaptin]. You make the back of your tongue vibrate when you say this, [Sahaptin]. “Soft TS” [Sahaptin], “Hard TS” remember you clench your teeth, [Sahaptin]. “Short u”, [Sahaptin]. That has a similar sound as the English oo, like ‘roof’, ‘wood’, [Sahaptin]. “Long u”, you just lengthen the sound above [Sahaptin], remember the double T you pronounce every T, [Sahaptin]. “W” [Sahaptin]. “Front X”, this has that hissing sound remember? [Sahaptin]. “Back X”, [Sahaptin]. “Front XW” [Sahaptin], “Back XW” [Sahaptin]. Remember these are “H” sounds, and “Y” [Sahaptin]. Your glottal stop, remember what I told you about when you have two vowels, you need to separate the two vowels to make a specific meaning, give it a specific meaning, now if we wrote this A together, it would have your long A sound but in order to give it the meaning intended here, you have to put a glottal stop between the two A’s and emphasize the first A with the accent, [Sahaptin], remember the accent is on the first A, [Sahaptin] it means ‘crow’. And it’s the same thing with your diphthong, you have two diphthongs here, accent is on the first diphthong, and your glottal stop separates the two diphthongs which gives you the sound [Sahaptin], remember the accent is on the first diphthong [Sahaptin], that’s ‘magpie’. Now here you have three vowels, one short and a long vowel. Now you have to separate it with a glottal stop to give it the meaning of ‘blind’, your accent is on the long vowel, so you say [Sahaptin], which means ‘blind’.

23:58 – Now we’ll move along to the very first thing that I talked about before I talked to you about the alphabet. I felt that it was very important for you to learn your diphthongs before you learn the alphabet because of the combination of sounds that are involved. I didn’t do this this time, but this is lesson one. So we will go to the diphthongs as part of Lesson one. There are eight diphthongs, and as I told you before, a diphthong is a combination sound that consists of a short or long vowel plus y or w. Some examples of diphthongs in Yakama are “AY”, it has the ay sound, which is sometimes written in English as EI or IE, like in tie. Now, in Yakama, are IE is AY. As in the word [Sahaptin], which means ‘maybe’. Or [Sahaptin], ‘bread root’. Now with a long “A combination diphthong AY”, we lengthen the sound to [Sahaptin], ‘bear grass’. Now your “UY diphthong” has an [Sahaptin] sound like [Sahaptin], ‘bear’, or [Sahaptin], ‘warm’. Then you give it a long sound by adding a “long U” and a “long Y” which lengthens it to [Sahaptin], ‘can’t’, [Sahaptin], ‘snow’. Your combination “AW diphthong” has the “OW” sound which is equivalent to OW in english like now. However in the Yakama, it’s “AW combination diphthong”, [Sahaptin], ‘no’. [Sahaptin], ‘fast’, ‘quick’ or ‘swift’. [Sahaptin], the accent is on the diphthong. Now your long diphthong, “long A diphthong” is [Sahaptin]. Notice the similarity between [Sahaptin] and [Sahaptin], however, with the “long A diphthong” you get ‘lightweight’. [Sahaptin], ‘mountain goat’. Your “IW diphthong” “short IW diphthong” is [Sahaptin]. It almost sounds like a little kitten meowing. Mew mew [Sahaptin]. [Sahaptin] ‘Huckleberry’. Now your “long IW” has a different sound, it’s just lengthened, [Sahaptin], which means ‘urine’.

29:16 – The Yakama language has its own grammar which is simply a set of rules that Native speakers unconsciously use to put together to form proper sentences. In Yakama grammar, the major parts of speech are indicated in this dictionary. Adjectives. Adjectives are words that typically refer to qualities and states. They may also modify nouns, for example, [Sahaptin], is an adjective whose primary meaning is big or large. An example of its use as a modifier is seen in the phrase, [Sahaptin], ‘big or large stone.’ Some adjectives are listed as having both singular and plural forms, [Sahaptin] is a singular form while [Sahaptin] is a plural one. Another example of an adjective is seen in [Sahaptin], ‘small’, which is singular, its corresponding plural form is [Sahaptin], short i k k s. You pronounce both k’s separately. [Sahaptin]. Adverbs are words that (tape cuts off)