Bella Coola sounds

Consonants
The 28 consonants of Nuxalk, with the orthography of (Davis & Saunders 1997, p. 23) when it differs from the IPA. (An alternate orthography without diacritics is shown at the Languagegeek.com link below.):

(Nater 1984, p. 3) postulates the existence of phonemic syllabic consonantal counterparts of the sonorants:, and (reanalysing them as ).

By this analysis Nuxalk would only have one phonemic vowel,. (Words claimed to have unpredictable syllables include ' 'mute', ' '(the fact) that they are children'. )

Allophony
may be pronounced:


 * before postvelars
 * between postvelars
 * , before a sonorant followed by a consonant or word boundary
 * adjacent to palatovelars
 * elsewhere

may be pronounced:


 * (?) surrounded by postvelars
 * before rounded velars followed by a consonant or word boundary
 * (?) before a sonorant followed by a consonant or word boundary
 * elsewhere

may be pronounced:


 * surrounded by postvelars
 * before a sonorant followed by a consonant or word boundary
 * before rounded velars followed by a consonant or word boundary
 * elsewhere

Syllables
The notion of syllable is challenged by Nuxalk in that it allows long strings of consonants without any intervening vowel or other sonorant. Salishan languages, and especially Nuxalk, are famous for this. For instance, the following word contains only obstruents:


 * 'he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant.'
 * (Nater 1984, cited in Bagemihl 1991: 16)
 * 'he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant.'
 * (Nater 1984, cited in Bagemihl 1991: 16)

Other examples are:


 * 'shape, mold'
 * 'bend'
 * 'bunchberry'
 * 'he arrived'
 * 'little boy'
 * 'saliva'
 * 'northeast wind'
 * 'cut with scissors'
 * 'animal fat'
 * 'that's my animal fat over there'
 * 'seal fat'
 * 'strong'
 * 'go to shore'
 * 'crooked'
 * 'you had seen that I had gone through a passage' (Nater 1984, p. 5)

Linguists disagree as to how to count the syllables in such words, what if anything constitutes the nuclei of those syllables, and if the concept of 'syllable' is even applicable to Nuxalk. Some assign every stop consonant in such words to a separate syllable, whereas others attempt to consolidate them.

For example, 'strong' at first appears to be a single syllable with  as the syllable nucleus. However, 'little boy' (phonemically ) may be thought of as having one syllable or two. If one, would make an unusual nucleus, with  the syllable onset; and if two, both  and  would be considered nuclei, since most theoretical approaches require every syllable to have a nucleus, as part of the definition of 'syllable'. If that assumption is relaxed, so that Nuxalk syllables can be modeled without nuclei, then 'strong' could be thought of as onset and coda of a single syllable, but it would still not be clear if the  and  of 'little boy' should be considered onset and coda of one syllable, or two onset-only syllables.

Compare Miyako language § Phonology.