First, an orthography note. Ceqli uses only 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 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. 19 consonants:
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 pleaSure, French Je
K as in KinK
L as in LuLL
M as in MiM
N as in NooN
P as in PiP
Q as in siNG
R as in RoaR (Midwestern American or Mandarin preferred, but any 'r' sound will do.)
S as in So
T as in ToT
V as in Victory
X as in SHoe
Z as in Zoo
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.
And five vowels:
A as in fAther
E as in bEt*
I as in machIne
O as in bOAt
U as in bOOt
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.
And two semivowels:
W as in We, coW
Y as in You, boY
ASCII IPA symbols for Ceqli sounds are shown at the bottom of this page.
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
Juxtaposed vowels are pronounced separately.
beo - BE-o
koa - KO-a
A Ceqli morpheme is always stressed on the last full vowel (full vowels are a, e, i, o, u), unless that full vowel is the last letter in the morpheme, in which case the stress is on the penultimate full vowel.
piramun - pi-ra-MUN
tayma - TAY-ma
taymar - tay-MAR
dia - DI-a
dyala - DYA-la
salo - SA-lo
saloy - sa-LOY
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!
And for stress rules, they are equivalent to vowels or diphthongs:
xweylu - XWEY-lu
delweym - del-WEYM
fyawqya - FYAW-qya
Note: In some contexts, the nasals and liquids can be syllabic.
himl (heaven), from the German, is pronounced like the German:
HIM-l
fiqr (finger) goes the same route, and is pronounced like the German 'Finger.'
FIQ-r
kanm is pronounced KAN-m, etc.
As you might guess, most such words are borrowing from English and German.
WORD SHAPE
For the purpose of determining word shape, 14 of the consonants are grouped and called ‘cwaba’ (leaders). Basically, they are the stops, fricatives, and affricates, plus the letter H. They do not include the semivowels, liquids and nasals.
Their names are beu, ceu, deu, etc. That is, the letter followed by eu.
(They are also sometimes used as pronouns. They refer back to the last word that begins with that letter.)
There are 12 faloba (followers). They include the vowels, semivowels, liquids, and nasals.
Nothing can begin with a faloba in Ceqli, of course, so the vowel names are:
zim a, zim e, zim i, zim o, zim u
They’re pronounced ZIM A (not ZIM-a), ZIM E, etc.
zim is simply the Ceqli word for letter.
The liquids and nasals have the same problem, so they have to have ‘zim’ names too:
They are named
zim lal, zim mem, zim nin, zim qoq, and zim rur.
Likewise, the two semivowels are named
zim yoy and zim waw.
All Ceqli morphemes have the shape nCnF. This is the basis of Ceqli word-shape. Actually, morpheme-shape, because two or more morphemes can combine into a compound word.
That is, each morpheme consists of one or more cwaba followed by one or more faloba. Obviously, there's more to it than that. A morpheme can't begin with just any consonant cluster, and there are limits on possible liquid, nasal, and vowel clusters as well. But for the purpose of discerning the boundaries of a morpheme, the nCnF rule is all that's necessary.
Taking a random sentence:
gozidangozisadomtendutcer
First we encounter a cwaba, then a faloba, then another cwaba, so we know that the second cwaba begins a new morpheme. So we can go ahead and break it up this way:
go zi dan go zi sa dom ten du tcer.
We may not know what any of it means, but we know what the morphemes are, and where they begin and end.
SCHWA BUFFERING
Not all sound combinations are easy for all speakers. Therefore schwa-buffering is allowed in Ceqli. That simply means that if you can't pronounce two letters together, it's allowed to insert a minimal schwa sound between them. Examples:
zbano (husband) should be pronounced
ZBA-no
but if you can't quite do it, you can say
zuh-BA-no
the "uh" being the sound of "i" in "cousin" or the sound of "u" in "umbrella".
The schwa sounds are never stressed, nor do they contribute to the syllable count for determining stress.
Ceqli ALPHABET PRONUNCIATION GUIDE USING ASCII IPA SYMBOLS:
a /A/
b /b/
c /tS/
d /d/
e /E/
f /f/
g /g/
h /h/
i /i/
j /dZ/
k /k/
l /l/
m /m/
n /n/
o /o/
p /p/
q /N/
r /r/
s /s/
t /t/
u /u/
v /v/
x /S/
w /w/
y /j/
z /z/