lesson 1 sounds and letters - vocabulary

The materials in these lessons are written in a phonetic alphabet, which has one main rule: Every sound has only one letter, and every letter makes only one sound, or for short: One letter, one sound.

part 1. vowels

An example of the difference between the Konkow phonetic alphabet and English would be the way vowels are written. Most of the vowels use the same letters as English, but in English the letters can stand for various different sounds, whereas the same letter in Konkow will always stand for the same sound.

part 2. vowel length and stress

There are two more things to say about vowels. One thing is “vowel length.” Sometimes the vowel is held just a little bit longer than other times. The “long vowel” can actually mean something different than the same word with a short vowel.

part 3. konkow consonants

We don’t need to go over all the consonants. They follow the same “one letter, one sound” principle as the vowels do and most of them sound like what we would expect the letters to stand for. But we will go over several sets of consonants that are very different from English.

exercises - ways to practice this lesson
  • Play the sample words for each sound and repeat them out loud. Go through the list of words several times this way.
  • Find more words for each sound in the Audio Dictionary and say them out loud too.
  • Print out the flash cards for this lesson and use them in games
Mary Jones
The wonderful Mary Jones videos have lessons organized by topic rather than grammar, and are very good for learning conversational speech.
or you can download a PDF of the lesson here DOWNLOAD - LESSON 1
Each lesson has a set of flashcards that can be printed and used for practice. As you work through the lessons, the sets can be combined to create more advanced sentences. There are several fun games you can play using these flashcards. The cards can be printed either single or double sided depending on what and how you want to play. Three games will be outlined below.
sounds and letters chart

Here is the complete list of Konkow Sounds and Letters with audio examples.