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 consonant sounds (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-taw-pa-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 = ˈkwojʃɛ

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 = xɔˈeðɔk

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 = ˈθejŋɣɛ

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 = urˈʒun

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.

SECTION III: Numbers