Choctaw

Noun

małi

1. Misspelling of mahli.

Usage notes

This spelling (with 'ł') was adopted by the editors of Cyrus Byington's comprehensive A dictionary of the Choctaw language for Byington's original mahli. In this word, the 'hl' is not a digraph representing /ɬ/ but a consonant cluster /hl/. Byington had used 'hl' for /ɬ/ before vowels and 'lh' elsewhere, conflating /ɬ/ and /hl/. The editors were unaware Byington's 'hl' represented two distinct sounds as their express purpose for using 'ł' was so that "each consonant has but one sound" (page xi). This spelling is never used outside the dictionary.