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
| Original | Proposed | Sound |
|---|---|---|
| a | as in father | |
| e | as in romance languages | |
| i | as machine | |
| o | as in float | |
| u | as in pool | |
| ã (tãng, hãbby) |
u as in hut | |
| ö (cö [sic], miaö) |
ou as in out | |
| æ (ðæ, gæo) |
aye | |
| õ (jõnt, drõt) |
oy as in boy | |
| ä, ê (häm, dêm) |
a-e as in hate | |
| ø (kønig, før) |
ö as in German mögen | |
| ü (fü, küssen) |
ü as in German müssen | |
| å (plåx, schåft) |
a as in hat | |
| î (wîn, trîmfer) |
nasal "i" | |
| û (ûnçivilan) |
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:
- The three common i-final diphthongs (aye, hate, boy = ai, ei, oi)
- The most common of the u-final diphthongs (out = au)
- Rounded front vowels (ü = rounded i/fronted u, ö = rounded e/fronted o)
- Nasalized rounded and unrounded open-mid front vowels (nasal I, nasal U)
- The schwa as in "tãng"
- The odd man out is the ash vowel (hat, plåx), the near-open front unrounded vowel
I propose:
- Maybe ai ei oi for aye, hate, boy.
- au for au. So we are consistent that diphthongs are two-vowel clusters, different from pure-but-exotic vowels.
- Keep ü and ö for what they are in German. So here the umlaut means "fronting".
- Keep circumflex for these, î and û.
- Keep ã for the schwa.
- 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.
Some classic words under this new orthography:
| áileäd | green | ailieid |
| äpril | April | eipril |
| bröken | to need | brauken |
| cö [sic] | lunch | czau |