Section 1:      PHONEMIC INVENTORY of VULCAN


Premiminary remark: 1) This phonemic inventory represents modern Vulcan.
                    2) The English equivalents of the pronunciation of
                       the phonemes are only very approximative.


VOWELS:    i          u          i:          u:
             e      o               e:     o:
short            ^                      ^:           long
                 a                      a: 

There are many vowel sequences which may be described as 'diphtongs';
ai (transcribed in broad Eng. transcription usually by -y- as in the
    Vulcan word "t'hyla" [t'haila]. (p.s. there shloud be accents on the
    ai - can't do that on this computer. Will have to send the post
    August version via snail on PC disks).
ei, oi, au,eu,ou, etc.

Nasalized vowels: e~, o~, a~

i - as in Eng. pit
u - as in Eng. put
e -    "       set
o -    "       not
^ -    "       but in fast speach; almost as final vowel in "teacher".
a - as in French patte
i: - as in Eng. mean
u: - as in Eng. prune
e: - as in French prenez (emphatic)
o: - as in Eng. fault
^: -     "      sir ; lengthened pronunciation.


CONSONANTS:

        p b f v w~ w m
        t d th dh    n
        c z sh zh
        k g x h      ng
        ks q
        j r l w~l rh

p - as in Eng. put
b -     "      but
f -     "      folk
v -     "      veal
w~-     "      no Eng. equivalent; voicless w (voiceless bilabial fricative)
w -     "      white
m -     "      man
t -     "      top
d -     "      door
th -    "      t with aspiration (i.e. t with h-release; not like Eng. the)
dh -    "      d  "     "            " d   "   "         "    "    "   
n -     "      not
c -     "     [ts] as in tse-tse fly
z -     "      zero
sh -    "      shoot
zh -    "      measure, but even more strongly voiced and with slight h-release
ch -    "      church
dzh -         [d]+[zh] pronounced as one voiced sound.
k - as in Eng. clock
g -    "       go
x - as in Scot. loch, ach; or German Bach (J.S.Bach)
h - as in Eng. hut
ng -     "     hung
ks -     "     lax
q  -     "     quote, but still more "velar" and emphatic.
j -      "     yolk, yes.
r - as in Italien bravo, or rather in Spanich Carrera, very strongly 
                articulated (voiced vbrant).
l - as in Eng. logic ( that famous word again)
w~l -           voicless bilabial fricative + lateral as one sound
rh -            voiced retroflex vibrant, somewhat like American or
                Irish 'r'.
n~ - as in Span. man~ana, Fr. mignon
' -             glottal catch; this serves also as syllable-boundary. Thus
                e.g. the word t'hyla "friend etc" is pronounced so that
                there is a strong onset [t] followed by offset overshort
                pause with glottal catch ['], with main dynamic accent
                on the first vowel of the diphthong, hence [t+'haila]/


Consonent clusters are not avoided; on the contrary, clusters of two
consonants are frequent kroy (stop), Katra, plak (blood), t'kahr (teacher),
T'Pring, etc.
Attention should be paid to the fact that consonant ( and vowel) sequences
with ' are NOT to be intepreted as consonant clusters (vowel diphthongs):
t'hyla, t'kahr, Kahs'wan, ka'athyra. (Pronounced [Kat' athaira] with very
brief pause between the two vowels a, and  with stresses distributed like `'
i.e. secondary stress on [Ka] and primary stress on [tha].

                        ----------------

Section 2: Minimal contrastive pairs for phonemics will be privided at
           a later date.

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