<> Welcome to the Wintu keyboard

Welcome to the Wintu keyboard

This is a keyboard for the Wintu language.

Type g to create ł, or G to create Ł (lateral affricate).

For other sounds that are not in English, you type two keys

Glottalized consonants: type j plus the consonant:

Type jp to create p̓, jt to create t̓, jg to create ł̓, and so on for the other consonants.
Type uppercase J to create ʔ (glottal stop).
The only glottalized consonants in Wintu are P̓ T̓ Ł̓ C̓ K̓ Q̓ p̓ t̓ ł̓ c̓ k̓ q̓.

Aspirated consonants: type x after the consonant to make the ʰ (superscript h)

Type px to create pʰ, and so on.
The aspirated consonants are Pʰ Tʰ Cʰ Kʰ Qʰ pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ qʰ.

Long vowels

Type z to create the length mark ˑ after a vowel.

To type English words, switch to the US English keyboard.

Pitkin and Schlichter

When you copy material from Pitkin's grammar and from the Dictionaries by Pitkin and Schlichter, you will have to type a few sounds differently from the way they did.

Pitkin and Schlichter write the lateral affricate differently from each other. Both use the Greek letter λ (lamda). The Wintu language group chose a letter that looks like L/l. Schlichter also uses ƚ. The group felt that this could be confused with t, so they preferred Ł with a slanted stroke. Here is the comparison, with the keyboard characters on the right side:

Pitkin	Schlichter	Wintu Keyboard
λ	ƚ	Ł, ł
λ̓		Ł̓, ł̓

Pitkin and Schlichter write x and x̣ for sounds made with the back of your tongue touching the uvula (which hangs down in the back of your mouth). They do this to reflect the fact that phonetically these are continuants rather than stops. The Wintu group preferred to write them in a way that is parallel to the stops.

Pitkin	Schlichter	Wintu Keyboard
x	x	Kʰ, kʰ
x̣	x̣	Qʰ, qʰ

This is visually and conceptually simpler, and the phonetic difference in pronunciation is not difficult to learn. It is also how these sounds are spelled in neighboring languages, so it will be easier for those who also have Achumawi, Atsugewi, or Shasta as a heritage language.

Here is a summary of the consonants in Wintu:

pʰ	tʰ		cʰ	kʰ	qʰ
p	t	ł		k	q
b	d r
p̓	t̓	ł̓	c̓	k̓	q̓	ʔ
			s			h
m	n
w		l	y

The Wintu keyboard includes uppercase letters on the assumption that you will want them when you write Wintu sentences and names. The dictionaries use only lowercase letters, except that uppercase E, O, and V have special meaning in a dictionary entry.

In the dictionaries, E = e and O=o most of the time. However, E=i and O=u if the vowel in the following syllable is a. An example is yOr 'rip, tear, pull up white grass or clover':

yor ‘Tear & rip up white grass for baskets!’ (imperative)
yura ‘To tear & rip up white grass for baskets.'

In a Wintu database, an alternative could be to write these roots with e or o and include the i/u forms as allomorphs (alternative forms) together with the context in which they occur. Thus, the above entry could be yor with an allomorph yur in the specified environment.

In the dictionaries, uppercase V matches the quality of a preceding E=e or O=o. If there is none, it matches the quality of the following vowel. An example is Vˑy, 'iterative':

cElVˑya = celeˑya, 'lots of cloth to be torn'
p̓OnVˑra = p̓onoˑra, 'to run'
cadaˑyi, 'many leaves pulled off (a vegetable)'