Help:IPA/Greenlandic
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Greenlandic pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.
See Greenlandic phonology and Inuit phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Greenlandic and other Inuit languages.
IPA | Examples | nearest English equivalent |
---|---|---|
çː | agguut | hue |
fː | affaq | for |
ɣ | igaaq | Spanish fuego |
j | qajaq | yes |
k | kukik | ski |
l | aleqa | land |
ɬː | illu | By getting the tongue up to the roof and giving a quick breath out; Welsh llwyd. |
m | mannik | man |
n | nuna | now |
ŋ | angut | sing |
ɴ | arnaq | like ng but further down the throat |
p | putu | spoil |
q | qajaq | like k but further down the throat |
ʁ | erinaq | French rester |
s | sisamat | soon |
t | tallimat | stop |
ts | timi, atsa | cats |
v | savik | love |
χː | tarraq | like Scottish loch but further down the throat |
IPA | Examples | nearest English equivalent |
---|---|---|
a | aja | cat |
aː | aak | mad |
ɑ | qajaq | like father, but shorter |
ɑː | aaq | father |
ɜ | erneq | bet or but |
ɜː | meeraq | Australian bear or Australian burn |
i | isi | meat |
iː | kiinaq | knee |
ɔ | oqaq | off |
ɔː | sooq | more |
u | pukusuk | roof |
ʉ | nuna | Australian goose |
uː | kuuk | coo |
y | ipi | roughly like meat, but with rounded lips |
Diphthongs | ||
ai | iliorarpai | irate |
- Between vowels, Greenlandic consonants can occur either short or long. In IPA, long consonants may be written doubled or be followed by the length sign: /nn/ or /nː/. Long fricatives are voiceless.
- The uvular nasal [ɴ] is not found in all dialects and there is dialectal variability regarding its status as a phoneme
- Short [t͡s] is in complementary distribution with short [t], with the former appearing before /i/ and the latter elsewhere; both are written ⟨t⟩ and could be analysed as belonging to the same phoneme /t/. Before /i/, long [tt͡s] occurs while long [tt] doesn't, so long [tt͡s] before /i/ could be analysed as long /tt/. However, before /a/ and /u/, both long [tt͡s] and long [tt] occur (except in some dialects, including that of Greenland's third largest town). Long [tt͡s] is always written ⟨ts⟩
- The vowels /a, i, u/ are lowered to [ɑ, ɛ~ɜ, ɔ], respectively, before uvular consonants /q, ʁ/.
- /u/ is fronted to [ʉ] between two coronal consonants.
- /i/ is rounded to [y] before labial consonants.
See also
- Category:Pages with Greenlandic IPA (43)