Breathe - Milluk

‘breathe, breathing’, easy way to type it: hahl-hahl
Lolly Metcalf’s South Slough Milluk
Americanist Phonetic	IPA
[ ha·ɫha·ɫ ], then [ ha·ɫha·ɫ ]	[ hɑˑɬhɑˑɬ ], then [ hɑˑɬhɑˑɬ ]

The Use of a Hyphen: Where it comes to our easy way to type this word, we have the problem that our way of writing the Barred L [ ɫ ] in that writing system is to write it as hl, so we use a hyphen to break the word apart, in order not to get the letters hlh in the middle of the word. A phonemic representation of the word can be / haɬ-haɬ / ‘breathe’ where the hyphen is used to separate what is technically called a ‘reduplicant’, which in this case is the single meaningful part of this word repeated in its entirety.

Instant Phonetic Englishization: Almost like saying halth_halth.

An Odd Phonetic Fact: The [ h ] in the middle of this word would seem to be simultaneous with the Barred L [ ɫ ] also in the middle of this word. We do not have a handy way of writing that phonetically.

for AMP: hahl ‘breath’
Annie Miner Peterson’s Milluk
Exactly Jacobs’ transcription	Americanist Phonetic & IPA
há·ɫ ‘breath’	[ ha·ɫ ] ‘breath’ & [ hɑˑɬ ] ‘breath’

Breathe and Breath: In this interview segment, Swadesh asks for a translation of the English verb ‘breathe’. In Jacobs’ slip-file dictionary, we see in Jacobs’ handwriting the Milluk word | há·ɫ | translated as ‘breath’, a noun. So Mrs. Peterson said a Milluk word which is identical to the syllable that gets repeated in the Milluk word meaning ‘breathe’ that we hear from Mrs. Metcalf. The repetition in the verb that Lolly says would seem to be the use of reduplication in Milluk for repetitive actions, which is certainly applicable to normal breathing.