Hearing a Front K [ k̯ ] in This Word:  We can hear that the first consonant of the Milluk word / ktsaas / ‘ashes’ is what we call a front k [k̯], i.e. a palatalized k, because of the nature of the voiceless vocalic transition [ ɪ̥ ] that we hear between the consonant [ k̯ ] and the following [ t ].  At the beginning of this Milluk word, it sounds like there is something like a whispered version of the English word ‘kit’. 

We phonetically transcribe the voiceless vowel that we hear Lolly Metcalf say in this word by using a small circle under a vowel [ ̥ ].  This is in both our modern Americanist phonetic transcriptions and the IPA transcriptions of what she says.  Our way of indicating a voiceless vowel is not to be confused with what can be seen in Jacobs’ old-fashioned phonetic transcriptions, where a small circle under a letter indicates a syllabic consonant.  There are examples of syllabic n in the Milluk texts, which we modernized to be [ n̩ ].  

One Version of This Word:  We are confident that Lolly Metcalf’s pronunciation of this word is essentially what Jacobs heard from Annie Miner Peterson for him to write | k̯tsa·s |, because we can hear Annie say this word in originally phonographic recordings, where the word does sound like Lolly Metcalf’s pronunciation of the word.