Narayani Pronunciation

[dlordoftime]

Here are a handful of rules to guide you through the pronunciation of Narayani. For clarification, l and r are liquids, w and y are semi-vowels, m and n are nasals, x is counted as one consonant, h is counted as neither a vowel nor a consonant, b, p, t, d, c and g are plosives, and the rest are fricatives.

1. All syllables must contain either multiple consonants or a long vowel, but if a syllable takes the accent, it has a long vowel regardless. An 'a' is always long.
2. Pairs of consonants, except for pairs with a liquid or semi-vowel as the second consonant, separate to have one consonant in each syllable.
3. Nasals, fricatives, liquids and semi-vowels double in pronunciation, and follow rule two, minus the exception, but if the previous syllable takes the accent, rule four is applied instead.
4. A plosive between two vowels goes with the second.

I think that's everything. Here I am assuming that the accent naturally falls on the penult, but can be moved for emphasis, and the apostrophe in the examples is here used to denote breaks between syllables.

[laroon]

Can you give examples? This is pretty complicated.

Let's take Nosis amani azhwa na. Is that No-sis with a long vowel syllable then a multi-consonant syllable?

And then would it be nO-sis Am-An-I? Also I'm confused as to what rule 1, 2, 3 and 4 (only 4, right?) are. Can you number them?

[dlordoftime]

Ok. I will do a breakdown of Nosis amani ajwa na. I will use my standard notation for vowel sounds, where 'ò' is like hot, 'ö' is like go, 'i' is like bit, 'í' is like be, 'à' is like hat, and 'a' is like car.

The first word, nosis. This would have nòs and sis by rule 3. But, by the exception to rule three, since nòs takes the accent because it is the penult, it drops the 's' and becomes nò. And by rule 1, the o must be a long vowel. So, in my standard notation, we have nö'sis.
The second word, amani. This breaks down to become am, màn and ní by rules 3 and 1. [/i]màn[/i] takes the accent, so loses the 'n', the a lengthens, and we have ma. Thus we have a(m)'(m)a'ní.
Third, ajwa. This would have aj and jwa because of rule 3, and the exception in rule 2. Like nosis, aj drops the 'j' because it is the penult, and lengthens. Thus we have a'jwà.
Finally, na. By rule one, this is na.

Putting all that together, we have Nö'sis a(m)'(m)a'ní a'jwà na, which is what we find in the song, more or less. I am thinking about including my original idea of saying that all 'a's are long.

[laroon]

Yeah I'm pretty sure there's no "hat" a sound in the song. And the long 'a' (ahh) is such a common sound in pretty much every language I think. (except sign language lol)

Pretty intense setup though. I'm interested to see what this sounds like.

[dlordoftime]

Listen to the song, and you will know. I derived my rules directly from how the song worked. I even added the exception in rule 3 because of nosis. Without it, the 'o' would be short, which is not what we hear. And I recently added in the exception to rule 1 because of yan, for the same reason.

[laroon]

I've listened to the song, and I think you're just splitting hairs. Even our forbears didn't think of more than the basic 5 vowel sounds. But if it works for your conception, then by all means, do it.

[dlordoftime]

So what if I'm splitting hairs, if I can pin down the pronunciation? Even though you don't realise it, you are still following these rules when you speak. I have just stated what they are.

[laroon]

I just speak. I've taken an IPA class, and to just let people listen to it and mimic is easier than saying "this one O sounds like the one in 'potato'".

IPA classes aren't fun. Hehe.

[dlordoftime]

I just speak too. But the rules I have created are what we inconsciously follow whilst speaking Narayani. If you were to follow the rules for a different languages, it would end up sounding like that language, not how Narayani 'should' sound.

[laroon]

And by using root words from one language to shape the majority another, the second one will sound like the first, not something that sounds different from another world.

[dlordoftime]

I change the words enough so that they are recognisable, but not obviously a Romance language. However, I am always ready for suggestions for alternate words for my Narayani. Comment in my dictionary with a suggestion, and I'll take it under consideration.