Phonetics​

Phonetics

The phonetics of Multilingua is quite simple as it does not require any special knowledge of pronunciation. Following international recommendations, Multilingua adheres to basic rules that promote simplicity and naturalness.

The orthography must be phonetic.

Multilingue allows flexibility in writing the alphabet, making it simple and easily recognizable.

The letter “e” can be added to the end of a word when the final letter is a consonant, for example:

pont = ponte

and it can be pronounced or not.

Two identical consonants appearing consecutively can be reduced to one, for example:

commun = comun

In the case of diminutives, it is possible to use the suffix –ete/-eto/-eta with a double consonant: -ette/-etta/-etto

This is the representation of the PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF MULTILINGUE.

Consonants

The first one is recommended, others are accepted.

  • Reserved: fh, jh, vh, wh, xh, yh
  • sor: Deaf
  • son: Sonant
 BilabialLabiodentalDentalAlveolarPaletalVelarUvularPharynxGlotal
 sor     sonsor     sonsor     sonsor     sonsor     sonsor     sonsor     sonsor     sonsor    son
OCCLUSIVE   p         b t         d    k        g q        qh  
AFRICATE   cchx   
FRICATIVE  ph       bh     f         vth        dh s         zsh         j kh      gh hhh
NASALmmh nnh    
LATERAL   llh    
VIBRANT   r     
VIBRANT MULTIPLE   rh     
APPROXIMANT   zhyw   

Vocals

  Previous Central Later
Closed (semiconsonant)   y   w
Semiclosed   i   u
Semiaoper   e   o
Oper     a  

In the case of encountering phonemes such as the English “ph,” the pronunciation of the source language must be respected, which is /f/ in this case. Speakers of languages that do not contain that phoneme can simply pronounce the sound of the first letter, /p/ in this case.

In Multilingua, capital letters at the end of a word serve as stress indicators. For example, the lowercase letter “z” indicates the invitative mode (ez), while the capital letter “Z” indicates the imperative mode (eZ). This means that it can be used for emphasis or to create a distinction.

To emphasize a word in Multilingua, the last syllable of the term is written in capital letters. For instance, to emphasize that the distinguishing feature of a book is its red color:

Le livre rogE