Pronunciation

As with the pronunciation of each sound varies, but, unlike most languages, the variance allowed by titi kalan is quite broad. For this page, however, we will concern ourselves with producing the most broadly understandable pronunciation from an English speaker.

The Alphabet

The titi kalan version of the Latin alphabet (Latina holu) comprises only 15 letters out of 26: a, e, i, h, k, l, m, n, o, p, s, t, u, w, y. You will notice that titi Kalan words are not capitalized with few exceptions which we will later touch on. The letters are largely pronounced the same as in English, with the closest sounds in English being provided in the charts below. These sound comparisons are not exact, but worrying about exact pronunciation over general understandability isn't in the spirit of the language.

Letter Pronunciations

Syllables

These letters can come together to form syllables, but as with every language, there are rules on how to construct these syllables. Any syllable may begin with any consonant. But because two vowels cannot come next to each other within a word, a syllable starting with a vowel can only come at the start of a word. All syllables can end in an -n. Below are all possible syllables in titi kalan, excluding those which end in -n, which are otherwise the same.

Possible Syllables

Stress always falls on the first syllable. setale is always pronounced setale, with the stressed syllable in bold, never setale as in Spanish or setale as in French. Additional rules to know are so: Firstly, a syllables ending in -n cannot come before a syllable starting with n- or m- in a word (so word internal -nm- and -nn- is forbidden). Secondly, the only forbidden syllables which you won't find in titi kalan are wu, yi, wun and yin.

The sole exception to the aforementioned rules on composing syllables and words is the word mu, which, when said quickly or in casual conversation, may be pronounced as a symple hum with no apparent vowel similar to when “mmm” is said in thought. This makes m the only consonant, which can stand alone without a vowel. For the sake of understandability, if one cannot pronounce m as its own syllable for whatever reason, they should refrain from inserting a vowel before the m by saying, for example, em, as, while m can stand alone, it cannot come at the end of a syllable, and this truly breaks the syllable rules in a way stand-alone m doesn’t, and it may cause additional confusion with simialar sounding words such as an or en. One should merely say a standard mu in these cases instead.