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Novvocu has a simplified sound system designed to be easy for speakers of any language to learn.
Vowels
Novvocu 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'
The Novvocu vowel system can be schematically represented as fitting this shape in a human mouth:
Vowel clusters are pronounced as in Japanese, where each vowel in a cluster has equal weight and is pronounced as if it were a simple vowel. Vowel clusters are not pronounced like diphthongs.
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 Novvocu 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 Novvocu, this letter was adopted to represent /sh/.
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 Novvocu, 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 Novvocu speakers 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 Novvocu 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 Novvocu 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 is a primary source of etymons for Novvocu words. While I considered ease of pronunciation to be somewhat important, Novvocu'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 Novvocu words.
All Novvocu consonants can occur before or after a vowel.
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