website/content/conlangs/mosici-lesson-1-reading-and-pronouncing.md

+++ title = 'Mosici Lesson 1: Reading and Pronouncing the Mosici language' date = 2024-02-28T01:40:41+01:00 +++

Phonology of Mosici

Mosici has the following sounds:

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Dorsal
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p	t		k
Fricative	ɸ β	s z	ɕ ʑ	ʀ
Approximant	w	l	j	(w)

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i y	u
Close-Mid	e ø	o
Open-Mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a

Written Mosici

Mosici uses the Nahan script. Here are the letters, their translitteration in the Latin alphabet and their base value:

Letter	Latin translit.	Value
p	p	p
o	o	o
l	l	l
h	h	Silent, lengthen a preceeding vowel
i	i	e, j (before a vowel)
a	a	a
r	r	ʀ
t	t	t
c	c	k
n	n	n
e	e	ɛ
z	z	z
v	v	β
m	m	m
f	f	ɸ
u	u	w
s	s	s

There are also accented versions of the vowels:

Letter	Latin translit.	Value
á	á	ɔ
é	é	i
í	í	i
ó	ó	u

And a handful of multigraphs:

Letter	Latin translit.	Value
si	si	ɕ
zi	zi	ʑ
ai	ai	ɛ
aí	aí	e
ao	ao	ɔ
aó	aó	o
oi	oi	ø
oí	oí	y
ei	ei	i
eí	eí	i

Finaly a vowel followed by a nasal is nasalized, and a coda n is not pronounced aside from the nasalisation.

Punctuation marks

A middle dot ({{%script"nahan"%}},{{%/script%}}) is equivalent to a comma, a double dot ({{%script"nahan"%}}.{{%/script%}}) is equivalent to a period. An hyphen ({{%script"nahan"%}}-{{%/script%}}) is used to affix grammar particles

Some examples.

• {{%script"nahan"%}}nahánc an-cirta{{% /script %}} nahánc an-cirta {{%ipa "/naːɔ̃k ãkeʀta/" %}} (The Nahan script)
• {{%script"nahan"%}}mosécéc an-ila{{%/script%}} mosécéc an-ila {{%ipa"/mosikik ãnela/"%}} (The Mosici language)
• {{%script"nahan"%}}ansi i oílisi{{%/script%}} ansi i olisi {{%ipa"/ãɕ i yleɕ/"%}} (here and now)

Exercise

Translitterate and give the pronounciation of the following phrases (copy pasting the text in a different font is cheating)

• {{%script"nahan"%}}an-ilat volnaref{{%/script%}} (I know the language)
• {{%script"nahan"%}}sinea oílivia, na-iosnelos{{%/script%}} (In the fullness of time, it will be done)

These will be corrected in the next part.