TLAHCUILTECPANALLI

PHONEME TABLE

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The alphabet in Nahuatl is very similar to that in Spanish since that’s the phoneme table they used to interpret the sounds they heard. Only those sounds which Nahuatl doesn’t have are omitted from it.

letter   name            sound

a            'a', like the sound /ah/ in apple (English.)

c             'ce', accompanied by the vowels "a", "o" and "u" has a “strong” /k/ sound. Examples:

“c a c t I i” , “c o h u a t I”, “c u i c a t I”, Like the sound /k/ in America (English.)

ch           'che', like the sound /tch/ in catch (English.)

e            'e', like the sound /eh/ in met (English.)

h            'ehe', like the sound /h/ in heart (English.)

i             'i', like sound /i/ in innocent (English.)

l             'ele'. In Russian there are two /l/ sounds. American ‘l’ is the strong sound and this is the soft one, like in the word las (Spanish.)

m         'eme', like the sound /m/ in Mars (English.)

n            'ene', like the sound /n/ in north (English.)

o            'o', like the sound /o/ in photon (FWTWN?? ) (Greek.)

p            'pe', like the sound /p/ in p (Greek.)

q            'que', like the sound /k/ in kilo (Greek.)

t             'te', like the sound /t/ in cat (English.)

tl            'tle'. This is the only difficult sound in Nahuatl. It comes from the articulation of a ‘te’ and an ‘ele’ but it sounds more like a voiceless ‘kl’. The trick is in stiffening the tongue while you let the air blow by the sides of your mouth.

tz            'tze'. like the sound /z/ in pazzo or pizza (Italian.)

u            'u', like the sound /y/ in Greek or the sound /oo/ in moon (English.)

x            'exe', like the sound /sh/ in show (English.)

y            'eye', like a long ‘i’ sound. Like the sound /y/ in New York (English.)

z             'eze' or 'zeta', like the sound /s/ in sing (Eglish.)

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