Triparic Pronunciation

THIS IS A DRAFT. Carrie and Shawn are revising things.

N.B. Both the digraph system and the accented-character system are acceptable native orthographies, but it's bad form to mix systems within one text.

Consonants

b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z		as in English
y		as in English when consonantal
g		always hard, as in English get
x		x as in axe, except z at beginning of words
q		Always part of a digraph "qu" for the cluster kw
c		Always "k" before a, o, u; always "s" before i, e
cz	č	ch as in church
sz	š	sh as in shoe
nz	ň	ny as in canyon
dz	ð	"dh", or th as in that
tz	þ	th as in think

Vowels

a	as in father
e	as in romance languages
i	as machine
o	as in float
u	as in pool
	as in out
	as in aye
	as in boy
	as in hate
	as in German mögen
	as in German müssen
	as in hat
	nasal "i"
	nasal "u"

Shawn's thoughts on the vowel orthography

(To be discussed Sunday night 20 March or thereafter)

So the following sounds must be accounted for: AYE, bOY, hAtE, OUt, hAt, mÜssen, mÖgen, nasal I, nasal U.

Broken down phonetically we have:

1. The three common i-final diphthongs (aye, hate, boy = ai, ei, oi)
2. The most common of the u-final diphthongs (out = au)
3. Rounded front vowels (ü = rounded i/fronted u, ö = rounded e/fronted o)
4. Nasalized rounded and unrounded open-mid front vowels (nasal I, nasal U)
5. The odd man out is the ash vowel (hat, plåx), the near-open front unrounded vowel

I propose:

1. Maybe ã ẽ õ for aye, hate, boy (the latter of these three is used already).
2. ă for "au", because it looks like a little U over the letter.¸
3. Keep ü and ö for what they are in German. So here the umlaut means "fronting".
4. Keep circumflex for these, î and û.
5. Use ä for the ash vowel. That's what it is in Finnish, and the umlaut could still mean "fronting". And if you front the sound "a", it moves up a bit and becomes the ash vowel.