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The Alphabet and Sounds

Page history last edited by Rex May 6 years, 10 months ago

 

PRONUNCIATION OF TCEQLI

 

First, an orthography note. Tceqli can be written in all lower-case letters or all upper-case letters. When writing about Tceqli in English, I use conventional English style capitalization, hence "Tceqli" is capitalized. And you can just follow English usage in capitalization if you like. And I use capital letters to show stress on some occasions in what follows on this page.

 

The Tceqli language uses the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. 13 of them are called cuazim, or "leading letter" (C) in Tceqli:

 

 

B as in Boy /b/

C as in SHin /S/

D as in DuD /d/

F as in FluFF /f/

G as in Good /g/

H as in Hat /h/

J as in meaSure, French Jean-luc picard, Je /Z/

K as in KinK /k/

P as in PiP /p/

S as in So /s/

T as in ToT /t/

V as in Victory /v/

Z as in Zoo /z/

 

X is a special letter used only to form foreign sounds by making digraphs. For example, the English "th" sound in "thin" would be represented in Tceqli by "tx."

 

The other 12 are called falozim, or "following letters" (N) in Tceqli

 

six vaul, or "vowels" (V):

 

A as in fAther /a/

E as in bEt* /e/

I as in machIne /i/

O as in bOAt /o/

U as in bOOt /u/

 

And one special character, #:

# as in bUt, AmericA  [schwa] /ə/

 

And two poyfayvaul, "semivowels" (P):

 

w as in We, coW /w/

y as in You, boY /j/

(they become semivowels when next to other vowels. to prevent that, insert a comma between them.

 

And three truin, "nasals," (T)

 

M as in MiM /m/

N as in NooN /n/

Q as in siNG /N/

 

And two hlar, "laterals" 

L as in LuLL /l/

R as in RoaR (Midwestern American or Mandarin preferred, but any 'r' sound will do.) /r/

 

N.B: *E is a short sound, as in English bEt, rEd, lEg. Remember to keep it short at the end of a word like "bine" or "twale". Do not pronounce it as in English "hooray". That sound is a diphthong and is indicated by "ey." The sound is common in English, but is seldom found as the last phoneme of a word.  The word deybe is pronounced like English "day bed" without the "d."

 

Y is rarely written, and the sound is often just an allophone of /a/ in unstressed positions. It's also appended to many letters to give them their names:

 

"zbano" is spelled zy, by, a, ny, o.

 

 

A few of these are unconventional.  Q was chosen to represent the consonant in siNG because it had no other obvious use, and because the NG sound rarely has a symbol in any language. X is used this way in Esperanto, to make digraphs.

U and I make these diphthongs:

 

ai - as in frY

au - as in cow

ei - as in bAthe

oi - as in bOY

ia - as in YArd

ie- as in YEllow

io - as in YOre

iu - as in YOU

ua - as in WAter

ue - as in WEt

ui - as in WE

 

When a  comma is interposed, vawl are pronounced separately:

 

be,o - BE-o

cu,a - XU-a

 

Stress: If a Tceqli morpheme of more than one syllable ends with a vaul (AEIOU) or poyfayvawl (WY), the stress falls on the next-to-last vaul:

 

dilna - DILna

 

pamo - PAmo

 

zilau - ZIlau

 

somalay - soMAlay

 

If such a morpheme has more than three syllables, a secondary stress falls on the fourth-to-last syllable.

 

tuiamalu - tuyaMAlu

 

kauelomani - kaweloMAni

 

If it does not end with a vawl or poyfayvawl, it is stressed on the last vawl: 

 

diyan - diYAN

 

cawal - caWAL

 

femur - feMUR

 

felin - feLIN

 

And if such a morpheme has three or more syllables, a secondary stress falls on the third-from-last syllable:

 

piramun - piraMUN

 

starloremi - starloreMIN

 

 

 

Finally, any diphthongs that you find difficult to pronounce may be pronounced as two separate vowels, u for w, and i for y, provided that the morpheme is stressed as though the two vowels are a diphthong!

 

Ceilo - CEY-lo or CE-i-lo, NOT Ce-I-lo

 

Triphthongs are possible though rare:

iai as in YIkes!

uau as in WOW!

uei as in WAY

iei as in YAY

ioi as in YOIks!

 

Tceqli morphemes must begin with one or more tcuazim.  But this is an actual language, so there are times when borrowed names do not.  In this case, for the most part, we simply put an 'h' at the beginning if the name begins with a vowel or semivowel:

 

English > heqlizo       (See Lesson 3 for an explanation of the final -t and the stress)

Al> halzo

Obama > hobamazo

 

Names beginning with with lmnqr add zr:

 

Lima > zlimazo

Russia >zrusizo

Norman > znormanzo

 

The names of letters in Tceqli:

 

A a

E e

I i

O o

U u

Y y

 

L hl#

M hm#

N hn#

Q hq#

R hr# 

 

B b#

C c#

D d#

and so forth

 

 

Note that the falozim group of letters are in violation of the rule that morphemes must begin with a cuazim. Consequently, they must be preceded by a pause or glottal stop.

 

All the cwazim, on the other hand, have names in the form of the letter itself followed by et, so no pause is required, though it's usually there anyway.

 

They are also used to spell words, of course, but they are also used as pronouns, or anaphora, to refer back to previously used words, in this way.

 

Djanzo pa gi kom pan. D pa falfa P. (Prounounced dy pa falfa pə.)

John was eating bread. He dropped it.

 

They replace da for clarity. To avoid confusion, they are always written upper-case followed by a space, of course.

 

They are also used for acronyms:

 

To hanho ze stan hu Hamerihaimzo.  HSH  Pronounced hə-sə-hə

The United States of America. (USA)

 

Janzo Fitsjeraldzo Kenedizo. JFK  Pronounced jet-fet-ket

 

And for foreign abbreviations, of course the falozim have to be used, too.

 

USA pronounced u-sə-a

 

And to name the chemical elements, both the cwazim and falozim forms have to be used, of course:

 

Fe pronounced fet-et, Ag pronounced at-get, etc.

 

In mathematical expression, lower-case letter symbols are pronounced the same way:

 

a+b=c  at plu bet kwal cet

Finally, for situations where extreme clarity is called for, the military, or NATO, "phonetic" alphabet is used as is.

 

ICAO Phonetic Alphabet
LetterCode WordPronunciation
A Alfa AL fah
B Bravo BRAH voh
C Charlie CHAR lee
D Delta DEL tah
E Echo EKK oh
F Foxtrot FOKS trot
G Golf Golf
H Hotel HO tell
I India IN dee ah
J Juliet JEW lee ett
K Kilo KEY loh
L Lima LEE mah
M Mike Mike
N November NOH vem ber
O Oscar OSS car
P Papa PAH pah
Q Quebec keh BECK
R Romeo ROW me oh
S Sierra see AIR ah
T Tango TANG go
U Uniform YOU nee form
V Victor VIK ter
W Whiskey WISS key
X X-ray EKS ray
Y Yankee YANG kee
Z Zulu ZOO loo 

 

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