Novial/Pronunciation 1

Contents – Lesson 1 – Lesson 2 – Lesson 3 – Lesson 4 – Lesson 5 – Lesson 6 – Lesson 7

Pronunciation Guide

Otto Jespersen, who devised Novial, was a professional linguist. He carefully designed the spelling and pronunciation of Novial to be as easy as possible for people of different language backgrounds while using West European root words as the basis of the vocabulary.

Novial uses the standard 26 letters of the modern Latin alphabet. There are no accents which makes it easy to write on any Latin alphabet keyboard. The letters C and Z occurs only in foreign names (proper nouns). There are only five vowels: A, E, I, O and U which are generally pronounced with their continental values, i.e. similar to Spanish and Italian. However, their very distinct sounds allow some leeway for speakers of different backgrounds while still avoiding miscomprehension.

Three digraphs are used: CH, SH and QU. Q occurs only in the combination QU. As in English S is pronounced differently from SH but the use of a hyphen between S and H when they are two separate sounds prevents any ambiguity. Every word is pronounced as spelled according to the pronunciation rules: Novial spelling is therefore phonemic (commonly called phonetic).

The stress generally lies on the vowel before the last consonant. If there is no vowel preceding a consonant it is on the second from last vowel. One exception is words ending in -ee where the stress is on the second from last -e.

Examples with stressed syllable in bold: abandona, fala, egal, vie, musee

Note that where alternative pronunciations are given, all are correct allowing easier pronunciation for people of different language backgrounds.

Letter	Sound (IPA)	Sound (example)	Example
A	a	a as in English father	abandona	abandon
B	b	b as in bet	bebe	baby
C	s or k	foreign names only. Generally: s before e and i as in Celsius, otherwise k as in Cairo	Caracas	Caracas
CH	ʃ or tʃ	sh as in shine or ch as in church	chanse	chance
D	d	d as in deep	defini	define
E	e or ɛ	é as in French fiancée or e as in in English pet	egal	equal
F	f	f as in food	fala	fall
G	g	g as in get	garda	guard
H	h	h as in hot	helpa	help
I	i	ee as in seen but shorter or i as in French petite	impeda	impede
J	dʒ or ʒ	j as in jet or s as in pleasure	jirafe	giraffe
K	k	k as in ski	kioske	kiosk
L	l	l as in let	lande	land
M	m	m as in moon	magnetisa	magnetize
N	n	n as in never	nature	nature
O	o or ɒ	o as in Italian Roma or o as in British English on	observa	observe
P	p	p as in sport	papa	daddy
QU	k w or k v or k u	qu as in question or qu as in German Quelle or cu as in Spanish cuesta	questione	question
R	r or ɹ	rolled r as in Scots English or English r	rapid	rapid
S	s or z	s as in summer or s as in rise	sune	sun
SH	ʃ or tʃ	sh as in shine or ch as in church	shuta	shoot
T	t	t as in step	teknike	technique
U	u	u as in put	unik	unique
V	v	v as in victory	variatione	variation
W	w or u or v	w as in west or ou in French ouest or w as in German West	watt	watt
X	k s or g z	x as in axe or x in example	auxiliari	auxiliary
Y	j	y as in you	yuna	young
Z	z or s	foreign names only. Generally: z as in Zambia or as in original language if different	Suez	Suez

When writing if you do not know or remember whether CH or SH is the usual form simply use either. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Novial home - Pronunciation Guide

Contents – Lesson 1 – Lesson 2 – Lesson 3 – Lesson 4 – Lesson 5 – Lesson 6 – Lesson 7

Prefixes – Suffixes – Proforms