Mescalero-Chiricahua is a Southern Athabaskan

Southern Athabaskan languages

Southern Athabaskan is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the North American Southwest with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas...

 language spoken by the Mescalero

Mescalero

Mescalero is an Apache tribe of Southern Athabaskan Native Americans. The tribe is federally recognized as the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southcentral New Mexico...

 and Chiricahua

Chiricahua

Chiricahua are a group of Apache Native Americans who live in the Southwest United States. At the time of European encounter, they were living in 15 million acres of territory in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona in the United States, and in northern Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico...

 tribes in Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

 and New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

. It is related to Navajo

Navajo language

Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestern United States. It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages .Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the...

 and Western Apache

Western Apache language

The Western Apache language is a Southern Athabaskan language spoken by over 12,000 of the Western Apache peoples living primarily in east central Arizona...

. Mescalero-Chiricahua has been described in great detail by the anthropological linguist Harry Hoijer

Harry Hoijer

Harry Hoijer was a linguist and anthropologist who worked on primarily Athabaskan languages and culture.He additionally documented the Tonkawa language, which is now extinct...

 (1904–1976), especially in Hoijer & Opler (1938) and Hoijer (1946). Hoijer & Opler's Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Texts, including a grammatical sketch and traditional religious and secular stories, has been converted into an online "book" available from the University of Virginia.

Consonants

The 31 consonants of Mescalero-Chiricahua:

		Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...		Post-alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
			central	lateral
Stop	unaspirated	p	t				k
	aspirated		tʰ				kʰ
	ejective		tʼ				kʼ	ʔ
Affricate	unaspirated		ts	tɮ	tʃ
	aspirated		tsʰ	tɬʰ	tʃʰ
	ejective		tsʼ	tɬʼ	tʃʼ
Nasal	simple	m	n
	prenasalized	(mᵇ)	nᵈ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ɬ	ʃ		x	h
	voiced		z	ɮ	ʒ	ʝ	ɣ

Vowels

The 16 vowels of Mescalero-Chiricahua:

		Front		Central		Back
		short	long	short	long	short	long
High	oral	i	iː
	nasal	ĩ	ĩː
Mid	oral	ɛ	ɛː			o	oː
	nasal	ɛ̃	ɛ̃ː			õ	õː
Low	oral			a	aː
	nasal			ã	ãː

Mescalero-Chiricahua has phonemic oral, nasal

Nasal vowel

A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...

, short, and long vowels.

External links

• Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Texts