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Dublex, as a language for use in a game, has a simplified sound system that should be easy for you to learn.
Vowels
Dublex has just five vowels, each written by a single letter.
a - as in 'father'
e - as in 'pet'
i - as in 'pizza'
o - as in 'Poe' or 'poet'
u - as in 'tutu'
Consonants
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Voiceless
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Voiced
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Stops
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p - as in 'pot'
t - as in 'tot'
c /k/ - as in 'cot'
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b - as in 'bought'
d - as in 'dot'
g - as in 'got'
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Fricatives
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f - as in 'fought'
s - as in 'sought'
h /sh/ - as in 'shot'
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v - as in 'vote'
z - as in 'zit'
j /zh/ - as in 'de jure'
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Liquids
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l - as in lap
r - as in rap
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Nasals
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m - as in map
n - as in nap
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All consonants may begin or end a syllable.
Guidelines For English Speakers
As an experienced English speaker, you will need to get use to the following:
 The letter 'c' is always pronounced /k/. In English, 'c' has several different sounds associated with it, the most common of which is /k/ as in 'cat' and the next most common is /s/ as in 'city' or 'cent'. In Latin (and we are using the Latin alphabet), 'c' was originally always pronounced /k/, but over time came to be pronounced /s/ in front of /i/ or /e/; English borrowed this pronounciation when it borrowed Latin vocabulary. The Dublex way is simpler for speakers of other languages, but requires a bit of unlearning for the English speaker.The letter 'h' is always pronounced /sh/. This is odd, certainly, but Latin lacked the /sh/ sound altogether and the 'sh' way of writing it was cobbled together by Norman monks. Since the /h/ sound itself does not occur in Dublex, this letter was adopted to represent /sh/. So when you see the Dublex word 'hazar', "tree", remember that it is pronounced /shah-ZAHRR/.
The letter 'j' is always /zh/ as in 'de jure'. The /zh/ sound does occur in English, but it written many different ways -- none of them 'zh'! The regular 'j' sound, as in English 'just', is in fact actually a /d/ sound followed by /zh/, a combination rarely permitted in other languages. Since the /dzh/ (English 'j') combination isn't used in Dublex, the letter 'j' has been pressed into service for /zh/ (which, like /sh/, never occured in Latin).
The letter 'r' is actually a trilled /r/ as in Spanish. If you pronounce it as in English, though, your fellow Dublexians are not likely to be bothered.
Every consonant is pronounced, so 'comb' is pronounced /comb/ (to practice, try pronouncing 'combat' without '-at'), and 'ruch' is /rooksh/ ("rough object").
Schwa Insertion
When consonants occur together in a Dublex word, you may -- if you find pronouncing the consonant cluster difficult -- insert an indeterminate vowel between the consonants. The indeterminate vowel or schwa is a mid-central neutral vowel, typically occuring in unstressed syllables in English, such as the final vowel in 'sofa'. Schwa insertion is something native speakers of Polynesian languages and Chinese dialects will find especially helpful, since consonant clusters do not occur in those languages. As a speaker of English, you will need it less often than they would, but may find it helpful when pronouncing words with doubled consonants: for instance, 'vissens' /vees-SEHNS/ or /vee-s{e}-SEHNS/, where {e} represents the schwa, typically represented as an upside-down lowercase letter e or, in some ASCII notations, as the at sign, @.
Stress & Syllables
If a Dublex word ends in a consonant, its last syllable receives the stress. If a word ends in a vowel, its next-to-last (penultimate) syllable receives the stress. So 'comun' ("communication") is pronounced /koh-MOON/, with the emphasis on the final syllable, and 'comunu' ("to communicate") is pronounced /koh-MOO-noo/, with the emphasis on the penultimate syllable. This keeps the basic sound of the root word the same, regardless of the part-of-speech ending. (Please note that the final consonant always begins the syllable with the part-of-speech ending.)
Design Notes
The phonology was based on a simplification of Lojban's vocabulary, as the Lojban database of words in Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, Russian and Spanish was the first source of Dublex words. While ease of pronunciation was considered somewhat important, Dublex's voiced fricatives are not among the 20 most common phonemes in the world's languages. In this case, the fact that these sounds were used in the source languages was more important, and the learner only has to master the distinction between voiceless and voiced fricatives to acquire three new sounds. Because /v/ was used, /w/ was omitted, since many speakers have difficulty contrasting the two (Chekhov's "enemy wessel" in Star Trek).
The letters 'k', 'q', 'w', 'x' and 'y' are not used in Dublex words.
All Dublex consonants can occur before or after a vowel.
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