the first thing you'll notice about this table is that there are too few consonants and too many vowels to make you comfortable. this is because you are used to the alphabet that this very text is written in. think about this: what good is having three letters that make the "k" sound? the letters "c", "k", and "q" all make the same sound? you'll think "yeah, but 'c' can also make an 's' sound.". but what use is that if you have an "s" already? and you'll think that "q" is need to spell word like "quick" and "quack". but really they could be spelled "kwik" and "kwak", except that "w" is an unnecessary letter also, but we'll get into that later. in the table above, all the characters are there that one needs to represent all the sounds in the english language and possibly more.
all the shapes of the letters have meaning. they are not just arbitrary forms, but we'll go into that later. you may notice that there are certain characters that correspond to multiple english letters. this is because those sounds are actually fundamental even though in english we represent them with multiple characters. the sound "sh" is not really an "s" sound and an "h" sound put together. and "th" is even more of a stretch when you think about it. it might be difficult to become completely comfortable with the differences between english letters and this system, but in time, you will learn that it makes a lot of sense. it will be especially hard to accept that some of the "t"s you've been pronouncing are actually closer to "n"s. the following shows how to represent sounds that are not fundamental by spelling english words with the letters from this language. you'll most likely need to reference the table above until you've memorized the characters. later in this page, there will be a description of why the letters look like they do and tricks to remember them.
dog =
(or
depending on pronunciation)
the "t" followed by the
high vowel "
", as in p
ot, becomes the "d". now to make the "g" sound, we need to have a "k" vocalized, but because there is no timbre to it, meaning no vowel after it, we use the silent vocalizer "
". when you pronounce dog, do you really give that "g" the built up of pressure first and then cause the air to burst out of your mouth? or do you just cut off the sound before the release? click on the words above to hear the differences between the two (in mp3). you're probably thinking "wouldn't that be pronounced 'dong'?". in the second spelling, the "ng" takes the form of that cut-off "g" because it is unvocalized. to spell "dong", we vocalize the "ng" like this:
. all this may seem overwhelming, but just try to hang in there.
cat =
(or
)
as i mentioned before, "c" is an unnecessary letter. "k" fills in for it. notice that the vowel "
", as in c
at (hee hee), that proceeds the "k" is
low, meaning it does not represent the way the "k" is sung. it does not change it to a "g". the "t" sound at the end can be pronounced two different ways, just like the "g" at the end of "dog" in the previous example. "p" and "m" are the same way as well. this will take some getting used to, but it does make sense when you pay attention to what your body is doing to produce sounds.
choose =
a "ch" sound is a combination of a "t" and an "sh". then "
" as in b
oot. and the a vocalized "s" which makes a "z" sound.
jump =
(or
)
"j" is essentially a vocalized "ch". if we wanted to write "chump", we'd spell it "
". an unvocalized "m" is basically a cut-off "p", similar to the cut-off letters in the first and second examples. to make "m" make the "m" sound we are used to, we have to vocalize it.
water =
(or
)
following up on "'w' is an unnecessary letter", the "w" sound is made from "
", as in b
oot, followed by another vowel. if we want to keep them separate (like in the word "act
uate" (
), we use the "
" character, which i have not discussed yet, but will do so right now. "
" has a few uses. the first one i just mentioned. the second use is the "e" in "letter" or "marketing", or "water"! it doesn't really make an "e" sound. it's just some undefined vowel sound. we can't drop it all together because even though that would work for the word "lettr" and "watr", the word "markting" looses a syllable. the last use of this character is as a comma, but we're far from starting grammar. the "r" at the end does not use the silent vocalizer. if it did, it would make the same sound, for "r" is always vocalized. the mouth just sits there while the tone lets you hear the shape.
ounce =
notice what makes up "ou" is not "
".
favorite =
the "v" is a vocalized "f". the "a" sound in "favorite" or "cake" is made from "
", as in b
ed, and "
" as in s
ee. the "
" is a more compact form of "
" (a silent vocalizer and an undefined vowel).
the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog =
this sentence is not that useful when it's translated because it doesn't use all this language's letters.
there will be more soon...
, 
, 
, etc.). certain consonant sounds, in any language, are pronounced very similar to one another. for instance, the sound a "t" makes is very similar to the sound that a "d" makes. "d" is essentially a "t" that is vocalized. in this language, the "t" character makes a "d" sound when it is proceeded by a high vowel. other characters share this rule. a "k" becomes a "g", an "s" becomes a "z", and so forth. for further example, let's say you want to write the word "bin". this language has a different word for "bin" than english does, but for the purpose of learning the phonetics of the alphabet, we'll use english words with this language's alphabet. the word "bin" is spelled "
= h
= and
= book