Alphabet & Phonology

Glotoid has 20 basic letters that are mostly* pronounced according their IPA values.

Leniency

For brevity in speech and poetry, speakers may freely choose to reduce the pronunciation of these vowels.

• ⟨i⟩ can be pronounced as the semivowel [j] anywhere.
• ⟨u⟩ can be pronounced as the semivowel [w] anywhere.
• ⟨a⟩ can be pronounced as schwa [ə] or even omitted entirely at the end of word.

For ease of pronunciation, speakers may modify the realization of these consonants.

• ⟨n⟩ can be pronounced as [ŋ] before ⟨g⟩ and ⟨k⟩.
• ⟨h⟩ can be pronounced as [x].
• ⟨z⟩ can be pronounced as [ʒ] or [dʒ].
• ⟨r⟩ can be pronounced as [ɾ:] or [əd̆] for people with difficulties in pronouncing "trilled r".

For clarity, speakers may aspirate or lengthen unvoiced consonants to further distinguish them from their voiced counterpart.

• ⟨p⟩ can be pronounced as [pʰ].
• ⟨t⟩ can be pronounced as [tʰ].
• ⟨k⟩ can be pronounced as [kʰ].
• ⟨s⟩ can be pronounced as [sʰ] or [s:].
• ⟨f⟩ can be pronounced as [fʰ] or [f:].

Consonant Clusters

This table lists all possible consonant pairs that can occur in between vowels, e.g. "ks" in "taksa". Pairs that are marked with an asterisk (*) are "initial clusters", which can be used both in the middle or the begining of a word, e.g. "kr" in "krania" and "sukrosa". Clusters of 3 or more consonants can occur if a consonant is followed by an initial cluster, e.g. "mb" + "*br" = "mbr" in "Kambria"

Speakers with difficulties in pronuncing consonant clusters may insert a schwa /ə/ or a short /a/ between consonants, e.g. "Kambria" may be pronounced as /kam.bri.a/ > /kam.bə.ri.a/ > /ka.mə.bə.ri.a/ > /ka.mă.bă.ri.a/.

Further Resources

Other Writing Systems

How to write names and foreign words