PHONETIC SYSTEM OF THE UTE LANGUAGE 203 



All the Ute vowels are normally pronounced with the tongue lying 

 more or less flat on the floor of the mouth. They therefore belong 

 in greater or lesser degree to Sweet's "mixed" series, in which neither 

 the front nor the back portion of the tongue is greatly raised. This 

 general position of the tongue imparts to the vowels an "impure" 

 resonance which reminds one of the timbre of EngHsh "u" in "bwt." 

 Theoretically, vowels of this series are made with minimum muscular 

 effort. 



The Ute vowels seem to be only four in number, namely a, y, bi 

 and ui. (See below.) With regard to this small number of etymologi- 

 cally distinct vowel sounds one should compare Ute with the SaHs- 

 han languages spoken in the Northwestern United States and possibly 

 related to Ute, which distinguish the vowels a, ^, e and o only, or 

 again with our European Russian, which uses only a, e, i, o, u and 

 u, whereas the Tewa language of New Mexico possesses with just 

 as great certainty at least twelve vowel sounds, and our English 

 distinguishes, as is well known, at least sixteen different vowels. 



Two imperfectly fused diphthongs are also heard in Ute: ay and 

 am. 



The two semivowels, j and w, have, Hke the vowels, a peculiar 

 "mixed" resonance. 



The only laryngeal consonant is the glottal stop, produced by 

 closing the glottis by means of the vocal cords. This stop forms 

 the termination of many vowels in Inlaut, being especially audible 

 before continuant consonants such as n, s, v. Occasionally it is faintly 

 heard between two otherwise contiguous vowels, or again it is used 

 to break a vowel the portion of which following the stop is voiceless. 

 An illustration of such vowel breaking would be the monosyllabic 

 "word" mti'ij, "hand." The glottal stop is in this article indi- 

 cated by the apostrophe. 



The series of stops k, kw, t, t\ and p probably approach most 

 nearly to Siever's series of unaspirated "Sprengtenues." The 

 organs exploding in their production are tense, they are not accom- 

 panied by voice during the period of occlusion and are not followed 

 by an audible outrush of breath. Usually, but not invariably, they 



