00 — Sounds
Ithkuil has 30 consonants bcčçdḑfghjklļmnňprřsštţvwxyzžẓ, 9 vowels aäeëiöoüu, and the glottal stop ‘.
Ithkuil vowels can be stressed. To mark a vowel as stressed, change aeiou to áéíóú and äëöü to âêôû.
Ithkuil also has 10 diphthongs: ai au ei eu ëi ou oi iu ui ëu. These should be pronounced as a smooth flow from the first vowel to the second, not as two separate vowels. To stress a diphthong, stress the first letter, as in ái êi ói.
An Ithkuil syllable contains one vowel or diphthong.
There are four types of stress in Ithkuil:
We’ll learn about how stress affects words later.
By the way...
Pronunciation isn’t super important for now, since we’re only writing Ithkuil,
but you can learn it at
the expanded version of this article.
Ithkuil pronunciation can be a little tricky for English speakers. But it
isn’t impossible!
Here’s how Ithkuil’s consonants are pronounced:
Incomplete note:
Vowels are a bit more complicated than consonants in Ithkuil, so I’ve only
included a very rough IPA chart. See
Yuorb if you don’t know IPA,
or if you want to learn about how vowel pronunciations changes in different
contexts.