PRONUNCIATION OF CEQLI

 

First, an orthography note. Ceqli can be written in all lower-case letters or all upper-case letters. When writing about Ceqli in English, I use conventional English style capitalization, hence "Ceqli" 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 Ceqli language uses the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. 14 of them are called cwazim, or "leading letter" (C) in Ceqli:

 

 

B as in Boy

C as in CHin

D as in DuD

F as in FluFF

G as in Good

H as in Hat

J as in John, Gem

K as in KinK

P as in PiP

S as in So

T as in ToT

V as in Victory

X as in SHoe

Z as in Zoo

 

 

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

 

Five vawl, or "vowels" (V):

 

A as in fAther

E as in bEt*

I as in machIne

O as in bOAt

U as in bOOt

 

And two pifaivawl, "semivowels" (P):

 

W as in We, coW

Y as in You, boY

 

And three truyn, "nasals," (T)

 

M as in MiM

N as in NooN

Q as in siNG

 

And two hlar, "laterals" 

L as in LuLL

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

 

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."

 

 

A few of these are unconventional. This usage of C can be found befoe E or I in Italian. 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 Pinyin, Portuguese, and Lingua Franca Nova.

 

W and Y make these diphthongs:

 

ay - as in frY

aw - as in cow

ey - as in bAthe

oy - as in bOY

ya - as in YArd

ye- as in YEllow

yo - as in YOre

yu - as in YOU

wa - as in WAter

we - as in WEt

wi - as in WE

 

When juxtaposed, vawl are pronounced separately:

 

beo - BE-o

xua - XU-a

 

A Ceqli morpheme is always stressed on the first vawl (AEIOU) in it.

full vowel:

 

piramun - PI-ra-mun

 

diyan - DI-yan

 

dilna - DIL-na

 

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!

 

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

 

Triphthongs are possible though rare:

yay as in YIkes!

waw as in WOW!

wey as in WAY

yey as in YAY

yoy as in YOIks!

 

Ceqli morphemes must begin with one or more cwazim.  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        (note: "zo" is suffixed to all proper names)

Al> halzo

Obama > hobamazo

 

This is also done with lmnqr:

 

Lima > hlimazo

Russia > hrusizo

Norman > hnormanzo

 

Now, in the latter cases, h can be pronounced as English h, as Russian x, or, it can devoice the following phoneme.  That is, hl would be pronounced like Welsh ll, hr an unvoiced r, etc.  I think the latter would be preferred, but because it's not that easy for everybody, the h or Russian x pronunciations are available.

 

One other point.  The very names of the non-cwazim letters of course don't begin with cwazim.  The names are:

 

atsi, etsi, otsi, otsi, utsi

yutsi, watsi

latsi, metsi, nitsi, qotsi, rutsi

 

And when pronouncing them, you must precede them with a pause or glottal stop. 

 

 

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