Justin B Rye 1995-2001
glossary sounds numbers nouns adjuncts pronouns verbs phrases syntax coinages examples lexicon

SECTION II: SOUNDS

IIa - Letters

An approximate pronunciation guide for English-speakers of most dialects:

IIb - Syllables

English syllables can begin and end with great strings of consonants (as in "scrounged, strengths"), but this language never ends a syllable with <b>, <d>, <j>, or <g>, and only allows very limited consonant clusters - it never gets any harder than the word <aumkia> "lazy", pronounced roughly "OUM-kya".

Meanwhile, the vowels fall into two sets: <e a o>, the "open" vowels, and <i u>, the "close" vowels.  When unstressed, the "close" vowels tend to behave as semivowels (like English "y", "w"); combinations of these sounds with "open" vowels produce diphthongs, which are perfectly straightforward if you think in terms of sequences of sounds - but be careful not to read them as if they followed English spelling rules for diphthongs:

<ei> is "eh"+"y" (an "AY" sound as in "bayed"; cf. "weigh", "beige", not "either")

<ai> is "ah"+"y" (an "EYE" sound as in "bide"; cf. "Kaiser", "aisle", not "bait")

<oi> is "oh"+"y" (an "OY" sound, strictly speaking as in "yoyo" rather than "coin")

<eu> is "eh"+"w" (an "EHW" sound that never occurs in English)

<au> is "ah"+"w" (an "OW" sound as in "boughed"; cf. "Saudi", "Sauron", not "baud")

<ou> is "oh"+"w" (an "OWE" sound as in "dough", "mould", not "bout")

It is possible for a particular vowel to occur twice with no intervening consonants, even if only in adjacent words.  When this happens, <i-i> and <u-u> may turn into "yee" and "woo" respectively, but the more common outcome is that the two vowels merge into a single drawn-out instance of that sound (so <e-e> is pronounced "ehh").

The following rules determine which syllables are emphasised:

1. Some words just aren't important enough to be stressed at all - <lo> "plural" for instance is most unlikely to be emphasised.
2. If there is only one vowel in the word, that's obviously the only candidate for carrying the stress.
3. If the word's first two vowels form a closing diphthong (one of <ei, ai, oi, eu, au, ou>), then the first vowel is stressed.
4. Or, if the word's second and third vowels form an opening diphthong (one of <ie, ia, io, ue, ua, uo>) then the third is stressed.
5. Otherwise, stress the second vowel.
6. Grammatical endings don't count as part of the word for the purposes of stress assignment - a word <jian> would regularly be stressed on the <a>, but <ji·an>, "your king", is stressed on the <i>.  That's why I use those <·> separators, to keep the affixes instantly recognisable for learners.
7. Exactly the same goes for verb prefixes: <meimmala> would be stressed on the first syllable, but <me·immala> "didn't love" is pronounced "maim-MAHla".
8. On the other hand, when words are built up of two equally important parts the compound is treated as a whole: <¿daraf?> "where?" (from <dar> plus <¿af?>, fused together - no <·>) is stressed as a normal word, with the emphasis on the second syllable.
9. The above rules determine "regular" word stress; however, many words disobey them in unpredictable ways, resulting in doublets like <uma> "onto" and <úma> "we" - the acute accent there signals stress placed irregularly on the first syllable.
10. Very long words may need to have supplementary stress on other syllables.  The general idea is that there can be three unstressed vowels within a word, but the fourth (give or take a diphthong) is reemphasised.  Thus <uitopas·ukh·oton> ("you would hear") has primary stress on the <i> and a "secondary" stress on the penultimate vowel: <uítopasukhòton>, "WEE-top-a-soo-HOE-tawn".

It should be noted that the pattern of stress that results from these rules is extremely counterintuitive to English-speakers; it's pleasant enough once you're used to it, but until then it can sound perversely syncopated.

IIc - Words

<kuoise>

The word for "town" is pronounced as a <k> followed by a semivowel <u>, a stressed <o>, a semivowel <i>, a palatalised <s> and an unstressed <e> - put it all together and it's pronounced roughly "QUOY-sheh".  Well, as a matter of fact the normal English "oy" vowel isn't quite right there, but as long as you're pronouncing the final "eh" it'll probably do.

<khoedok>

That's <kh> (a strong "H" is close enough) followed by unstressed <o>, stressed <e>, weak (softened) <d>, an unstressed <o> and <k>; it means "old", and it's pronounced "haw-ATHE-awk", with an "ATHE" as in "bathe".  Speakers of American accents where "Shaw" rhymes with "Shah" need to take special care to distinguish <o>, which has lip-rounding, from <a>, which has none.

<theinge>

Thirdly consider "is allowed to".  It's <th>, then stressed <e> followed by semivowel <i>, <n>, weak <g> and finally unstressed <e>.  I hope it's obvious that the <ng> works as in "finger", not "ginger".  A <g> never softens like that - but within words like this it does tend towards a Spanish-style "gh" sound.  The whole thing is thus "THAYNG-gheh", with a particularly clear diphthong in the first syllable; it starts out sounding just like the English word "thane".

<urjun>

Or try this word, meaning "day" (as opposed to "night"): unstressed <u>, <r>, weak <j>, stressed <u> and <n>.  The final "-oon" sound is simple, but the <j> is a French-style "zh" rather than a full "dzh" sound, and the first syllable has absolutely nothing in common with English "ur" - instead it's closer to "oor".  Speakers of accents resembling "BBC English" (such as my own - details here) need to take special care to pronounce the <r>.

For any serious linguists out there I'll repeat myself in ASCII-IPA: ['kwojSE], [xO'eDOk], ['TejNQE], [uR'Zun]; and in Unicode Real-IPA: [ˈkwojʃɛ], [xɔˈeðɔk], [ˈθejŋɣɛ], [urˈʒun].

SECTION III: Numbers