syllable. Furthermore, initial vowel deletion in the case of single-morpheme, short words such as ifa 'dog' or icó 'deer' is impossible, as the shortest a Creek word can be is a one-syllable word ending in a long vowel (fóː 'bee') or a two-syllable word ending with a short vowel (ací 'corn'). Long vowels There are three long vowels in Muscogee Creek (), which are slightly longer than short vowels and are never centralized. Long vowels are rarely followed by a sonorant in the same syllable. Therefore, when syllables are created (often from suffixation or contractions) in which a long vowel is followed by a sonorant, the vowel is shortened: {| |in-ɬa:m-itá | |'to uncover, open' |- |in-ɬam-k-itá | |'to be uncovered, open' |} Diphthongs In Muscogee, there are three diphthongs, generally realized as . Nasal vowels Both long and short vowels can be nasalized (the distinction between acces and ącces below), but long nasal vowels are more common. Nasal vowels usually appear as a result of a contraction, as the result of a neighboring nasal consonant, or as the result of nasalizing grade, a grammatical ablaut, which indicates intensification through lengthening and nasalization of a vowel ( 'warm' with the nasalizing grade intensifies the word to likŏ:nth-os-i: 'nice and warm'). Nasal vowels may also appear as part of a suffix that indicates a question (o:sk-ihá:n 'I wonder if it's raining'). Tones There are three phonemic tones in Muscogee; they are generally unmarked except in the linguistic orthography: high (marked in the linguistic orthography with an acute accent: á, etc.), low (unmarked: a, etc.), and falling (marked with a circumflex: â, etc.). Orthography The traditional Muscogee alphabet was adopted by the tribe in the late 1800s and has 20 letters. Although it is based on the Latin alphabet, some sounds are vastly different from those in English like those represented by c, e, i, r, and v. Here are the (approximately) equivalent sounds using familiar English words and the IPA: There are also three vowel sequences whose spellings match their phonetic makeup: Consonants As mentioned above, certain consonants in Muscogee, when they appear between two sonorants (a vowel or m, n, l, w, or y), become voiced. They are the consonants represented by p, t, k, c, and s: c can sound like , the "j" in just k can sound like , the "g" in goat p can sound like