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Subtle Ejective: In either of the two times that Lolly Metcalf says this word, there is no question that the second consonant of this word is an ejective, but it is not very obviously an ejective. That is normal in languages that have ejectives.
Subtle Fronting (Palatalization): We know that there is an Ejective Front K [ k̯ʼ ] in this word, not really because the consonant sounds any different to us from an Ejective Regular K [ kʼ ], but because of the effect that the fronting (i.e. palatalization) has on the vowel that immediately precedes the fronted consonant. The fronting itself is a very subtle phonetic effect that Lolly only exaggerates a few times in saying a few words, so that we can really hear the fronting itself. Front Ks in Milluk, whether ejective [ k̯ʼ ], or non-ejective [ k̯ ], are made with the tongue flattened up against the roof of the mouth, ready to say the vowel [ i ], or the semivowel [ y ], but without really saying the vowel [ i ], or the semivowel [ y ], as a full vowel or semivowel. With this word, there is no vowel [ i ], [ ɪ ], or semivowel [ y ] to be heard after the Ejective Front K [ k̯ ] in this word. The tongue may be flattened up against the roof of the mouth, ready to say the vowel [ i ], or the semivowel [ y ], but there is really no follow-through to be heard. It is only the preceding vowel that shows the effects of the ejective Front K [ k̯ʼ ] not being an ejective Regular K [ kʼ ].
Because of the palatalization, the vowel in the first syllable of this word has a slightly higher tongue height, being pronounced as [ ɛ ], the vowel in the English word ‘heck’, higher than the tongue height that it would have if it were before a regular K [ kʼ ], in which case it would be pronounced as a fully low front vowel [ æ ], like the vowel in the English word ‘hack’. That is the case, because the vowel in the first syllable of this word is an instance of the Milluk phoneme / æ /. In English / æ / and / ɛ / are two different phonemes, with the words ‘heck’ and ‘hack’ as minimal pairs to prove it. In Milluk, the phonetic vowel [ ɛ ] and the phonetic vowel [ æ ] are members of the same phoneme, which is to say that they are the same letter in the Milluk language’s own natural alphabet. We write Milluk phonetically here, unlike Jacobs who wrote Milluk phonemically where it comes to this vowel, only using the vowel [ ɛ ] to represent the phoneme that we write as / æ /.
It makes a difference that the vowel is short in the Milluk word meaning ‘dog’. Contrast the short vowel in this word with the long vowel in the Milluk word eikʼ ‘little’, where in our easy way to type the word, we write the vowel as two vowels to show that it is a long vowel, but we write the second vowel as the phonetic vowel [ i ]. That Milluk word is phonetically [ ʔeˑk̯ʼ ], with the phonetic vowel [ e ] and we have also heard it as [ ʔeɪk̯ʼ ] with a high front lax vowel [ ɪ ] forming a diphthong with the vowel [e]. That long vowel (or maybe it really is a diphthong) has an even higher tongue height than the vowel [ ɛ ], so that the Milluk word eikʼ ‘little’ sounds a lot like the English word ‘ache’. The English word ‘ache’ is phonetically [ ʔeɪk ]. It is as if the vowel length in the Milluk word eikʼ ‘little’ magnifies the vowel-heightening effect of the palatalized consonant on the preceding vowel.