Timucua Pronunciation

1. Printing and Spelling Timucua

Timucua was written using the Spanish alphabet long before Spanish (or any language) had standardized spelling. Because of this, the documents exhibit extensive variation, and the same word can be found spelled in several different ways. For example, the Timucua word ubua “widow” can be found spelled uba, vbua, or even vba.

It can be difficult to read printing from the 16th and 17th century. One issue is the letter <s>, which can be printed in a few different ways. In that period, word-final <s> was printed in the same way used now. But when <s> appeared in the middle of a word, a different character called “long s” was used. Consider the first Spanish question in the image below – Que vamos à la Ygleſia? The letter printed as ſ is the italic version of a letter called “long s”. The first word in the Timucua question has a different form of this letter in the word Dioſi. The letter ſ is the regular (non-italic) way of printing the long s. All of these different forms (s, ſ, ſ ) are just different shapes for the same letter, pronounced as an /s/ sound.

One problem that modern readers have with this type of text is confusing the letter <f> with the “long s”. A general rule of thumb in these texts is that the letter <f> should have a horizontal line that crosses the vertical, while long <s> should not. Look at the two letters, enlarged a bit.

ſ f

Additionally, some of our printed Timucua materials are also a little blurry, and it can be hard to tell the difference between similar letters, such as <ſ> and <f>, <t> and <r>, and <h> and . For example, consider the word hachibuenoterama in the image above, in which the second <h> and the look very similar due to the uneven printing quality of the era. Read here to learn more about early modern printing practices.

2. Kinds of Syllables in Timucua (and why it matters)

Timucua syllables occur in the following shape: (C)V(C). This means that all syllables contain a vowel, and may begin and/or end with a single consonant. Additionally, the final consonant can only be an s or n. In almost all recorded instances, these final consonants are the result of losing a vowel, usually i.

Knowing information like this about the structure of words makes it easier to identify letters in the text which otherwise might be difficult to read. For example, the letters <c> and <e> often look alike because of the printing quality, but if an ambiguous letter follows a <t>, you know it must be an <e>, because sequences of <tc> are not allowed in this language. One noteworthy exception is the combination <ch>, which represents a single sound.

One of the times this is most useful is with the consonant-vowel pairs b/u and y/i. If you see a between two vowels, you can know with some degree of certainty that it is the consonant /b/, because sequences of multiple vowels are rare (though there is a word ea “dwell/sit/live”). Similarly, an between two vowels can be read as the consonant /y/.

See examples of the possible syllable types below. Looking back at the text above, note the lack of consonant and vowel clusters, and the resulting frequency of a consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel… pattern.

V	ano “person”
CV	paha “house”
VC	istanimano “saying” <from isi + ta + nima + no>
CVC	*man*tela “think”

3. The Sounds of Timucua

Depending on how they are counted, Timucua has fourteen frequently used consonants and five vowels. There are also two rare consonants whose pronunciation is difficult to interpret. Neighboring languages have a similar number of consonants, and Muskogean languages have even fewer vowels. This is relatively small compared to English, which, depending on dialect, may have twenty-four consonants and twelve vowels.

Below is the list of frequent consonants which exist in Timucua:

	Pronunciation	Spellings in the corpus	Example words
p¹	the p in hope	p	paha “house”
b¹	something between the b in habit and the w in away	b, v, u	hebua “to speak”
j	the y in yolk	y, i	cuyu “fish”
t	the t in hat	t	tera “good”
k	the ck in tick	c (before a, u, and o), q (before i, e)	hitiqiri “barn owl”
k^w	the qu in queen	qu	cobaqua “to be chaste”
f¹	the f in fit	f, hu	ofueno “after”
s	the s in sit	s	miso “older brother”
h	the h in hit	h, x, g, j	oho “to give”
t͡ʃ	the ch in church	ch	pachi “dove”
m¹	the m in moon	m	mueno “to be called”
n	the n in new	n	nia “woman”
l	the l in look	l	lico “blue/green”
r	the Spanish r, as in cara	r	ara “bear”

Next is a list of the five vowels of Timucua. Note that they appear to be the same as the five vowels of Spanish.

a	the o in lot	a	paha “house”
e	the ay in pay	e	ea “live”
i	the ee in meet	i, y	yni “to be/do”
o	the o in Pope	o	ano “person”
u	the oo in boot	u	cume “heart”

Lastly, there are two rare consonants. Both appear in a limited set of words.

ŋ²	the ng in ping	ng	maruangala “fifteen”
h^w3	unknown pronunciation, maybe wh like in white or f like in foe (see footnote)	hu, gu	hue “hand”

Footnotes:

1- Our sources describe this set of consonants {p, b, f, m}, known as labial consonants, as being sometimes pronounced with a small w sound in certain dialects, and thus are sometimes followed with a . For example: ofono~ofueno “after” and tafi~tafui “husband’s brother”

2- this sound is consistently written as ng but only occurs in the suffix -angala “-teen” (in numbers). It is possible a variant spelling of /nk/ but the fact that -angala is consistently written with <ng> and never <nc> raises doubts about this hypothesis.

3- hu may represent the f sound, the two separate sounds h and u, or a unique sound. Because any of these three alternatives is possible, we cannot say for certain whether or not it constitutes a separate sound or simply a spelling variation.

4. Transcription Exercise

Examine the text below. Attempt to transcribe it into a more phonetic spelling, i.e.: however you would write something in order to instruct another person in how to pronounce it. You could choose a more modern/standardized Spanish spelling, or something akin to the pronunciation guides that you would find in an English language dictionary.