Muscogee phonology

The phoneme inventory of Muscogee Creek consists of thirteen consonants and three vowel qualities, which distinguish length and nasalization. In addition, Creek also makes use of the gemination of plosives, fricatives and sonorants.

Consonants
The consonant phonemes of Muscogee Creek are:

Plosives
There are four voiceless plosives in Creek:. is a voiceless palatal affricate that patterns as a single consonant, and therefore with the other voiceless stops. has an alveolar allophone before. The obstruent consonants are voiced to  between sonorants and vowels, but remain voiceless at the end of a syllable.

Between instances of [], or after at the end of a syllable, the velar  is realized as the uvular [] or []. For example:


 * in-coko
 * ‘his or her house’
 * tokná:wa
 * ‘money’
 * }
 * tokná:wa
 * ‘money’
 * }
 * ‘money’
 * }
 * }
 * }

Fricatives
There are four voiceless fricatives in Muscogee Creek:. can be realized as either labiodental or bilabial ( in place of articulation. Predominantly among speakers in Florida, the articulation of  is more laminal, resulting in  being realized as [], though for most speakers  is a voiceless apico-alveolar fricative.

Like, the glottal is sometimes realized as the uvular [] when proceeded by  or when syllable-final. For example:


 * oh-leyk-itá
 * ‘chair’
 * oholopi:
 * ‘year’
 * }
 * oholopi:
 * ‘year’
 * }
 * ‘year’
 * }
 * }
 * }

Sonorants
The sonorants in Muscogee Creek consist of two nasals ( and ), two semivowels ( and ), and the lateral, all voiced. Nasal assimilation occurs in Creek: becomes [] before.

Sonorants are devoiced when followed by in the same syllable. This results in a single voiceless consonant. For example:


 * camhcá:ka
 * ‘bell’
 * akcáwhko
 * ‘a type of water bird’
 * }
 * akcáwhko
 * ‘a type of water bird’
 * }
 * ‘a type of water bird’
 * }
 * }
 * }

Geminates
All plosives and fricatives in Muscogee Creek can be geminated (lengthened). Some sonorants may also be geminated, though and  are less common than other sonorant geminates, especially in roots. For the majority of speakers, except for those influenced by the Alabama or Koasati languages, the geminate does not occur.

Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Muscogee Creek are as follows: There are three short vowels and three long vowels. There are also the nasal vowels (in the linguistic orthography these are often written with an ogonek underneath or a following superscript "n"). Most occurrences of nasal vowels are the result of nasal assimilation or the nasalizing grade, but there are some forms that show contrast between oral and nasal vowels. For example:


 * pó-ki
 * ‘our father’
 * opónko
 * ‘cutworm’
 * }
 * ‘cutworm’
 * }
 * }

Short Vowels
The three short vowels can be realized as the lax and centralized  when a neighboring consonant is coronal or in closed syllables. However, will generally not centralize when followed by  or  in the same syllable, and  will generally remain noncentral if word-final. Initial vowels can be deleted in Creek, mostly applying to the vowel. This deletion will affect the pitch of the following syllable, creating a higher-than-expected pitch on the new initial syllable. Furthermore, initial vowel deletion in the case of single-morpheme, short words such as ifa ‘dog’ or icó ‘deer’ is impossible, since the shortest a Creek word can be is either a one-syllable word ending in a long vowel (fóː ‘bee’) or a two-syllable word ending with a short vowel (ací ‘corn’).

Long Vowels
There are three long vowels in Muscogee Creek, which are held out slightly longer than short vowels, and which are never centralized.

Long vowels are rarely followed by a sonorant in the same syllable. Therefore, when syllables are created (often from suffixation or contractions) in which a long vowel is followed by a sonorant, the vowel is shortened. For example:


 * in-a:m-itá
 * ‘to uncover, open’
 * in-am-k-itá
 * ‘to be uncovered, open’
 * }
 * ‘to be uncovered, open’
 * }
 * }

Diphthongs
In Creek, there are three diphthongs which are generally realized as.

Nasal Vowels
Both long and short vowels can be nasalized (cf. the distinction between acces and ącces below), though long nasal vowels are more common. Nasal vowels usually appear as a result of a contraction, as the result of a neighboring nasal consonant, or as a the result of nasalizing grade, a grammatical ablaut which indicates intensification through lengthening and nasalization of a vowel (likoth- ‘warm’ with the nasalizing grade intensifies the word to likŏ:nth-os-i: ‘nice and warm’). Nasal vowels may also appear as part of a suffix which indicates a question (o:sk-ihá:n ‘I wonder if it’s raining’).

Tones
There are three phonemic tones in Muscogee Creek, which are generally unmarked, except in the linguistic orthography: high (marked in the linguistic orthography with an acute accent: á, etc.), low (unmarked: a, etc.), and falling (marked with a circumflex: â, etc.).