Appendix:G'Vunna pronunciation

G'Vunna Language Navigation: Home, Phonology, Grammar, Vocabulary, Orthography

The G'Vunna language has 24 consonants, 8 vowels, and no glides.

Standard Romanization

Letter	IPA	English example	Notes
a	a	father
b	b	bog
ch	tʃ	each
d	d	dog
dh	ð	this
e	e	bet
ǝ	ǝ	sofa
f	f	food
g	g	good
gh	ɣ~ʁ	-	Like French r in rouge.
i	i	machine
j	dʒ	jam
k	k	skill
kh	x~χ	-	Like German ch in Buch.
l	l	left
m	m	man
n	n	no
ng	ŋ	sing
o	o	tote
ö	ø	-	Like German ö in Köln.
p	p	span
q	q	-	Like a [k] but further back in the mouth.
r	ʀ	-
s	s	see
sh	ʃ	sheep
t	t	stop
th	θ	thin
u	u	rude
ü	y	-	Like German ü in für.
v	v	voice
z	z	zoo
zh	ʒ	azure

Notes:

• Doubled consonants, or geminates, occur frequently in G'Vunna. To pronounce a doubled consonant, simply pronounce it twice. You might think of it as lingering over the consonant. Think of the "s" sound you pronounce in "Miss Sally". It's a longer "s" than if you pronounce the similar phrase "Miss Ally". The same goes for the doubled consonants of G'Vunna. One important note about the romanization: If a digraph (e.g. kh, gh, etc.) is doubled, only the first letter will be doubled (hence, kkh not khkh). The consonant is pronounced like a doubled consonant, though, as actual combinations such as k followed by kh are impossible.

Phonetics

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Plosive	p b		t d		k g	q
Affricate				tʃ ⟨ch⟩ dʒ ⟨j⟩
Fricative	f v	θ ⟨th⟩ ð ⟨dh⟩	s z	ʃ ⟨sh⟩ ʒ ⟨zh⟩	x ⟨kh⟩ ɣ ⟨gh⟩
Nasal	m		n	ɲ ⟨ny⟩	ŋ ⟨ng⟩
Approximant			l	j ⟨y⟩		ʀ ⟨r⟩

Vowels

G'Vunna uses [ǝ] as a phoneme, with equal status to all the other vowels. The vowel system is summarized in the following table:

	Front		Central	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i	y ⟨ü⟩		u
Mid	e	ø ⟨ö⟩	ə ⟨ǝ⟩	o
Open			a

G'Vunna has high-low vowel harmony, with the following pairs:

• i ~ e
• y ~ ø
• u ~ o
• ǝ ~ a

This means that all G'Vunna words contain vowels only from either the former or the latter set.