PRONUNCIATION

This page in under construction. Please be careful not to trip over the accent marks and nails.

Tapissary has a Romanized alphabet which can be used for the spoken language. As there is no font for the 8,000 glyphs of Tapissary, this is the only way to type it onto the computer.

VOWELS

Romanization  IPA Symbol Description
a [ɑ] a as in art, o as in dog
 
añ [ɑ̃] nasal an as in the French élégant, or spelled with en as in evident
 
e [ɛ] e as in pet, credit, meditation
 
é [e] ay as in pay, ai as in main, a as in date
 
ë [ɵ] as the e in French le, similar to the a in sofa but with rounded lips
 
i [i] ee as in meet, ea as in eat
 
iñ [œ̃] nasal e (written with the letter i) as in the French sapin, matin
 
o [o] oa as in coast
 
ö [ɔɵ] the drawn out o followed by a barely audible ë sound
 
ou [u] oo as in pool, u as in rule
 
oñ [ɔ̃] nasal on as in the French dont, pardon
 
u [y] u as in the French entendu, unique

Ë

Please note the chart above has a mistake. The ë is pronounced like the ‘e’ in the French words ‘le’, ‘sera’, and like the American English pronunciation of words like ‘put’, ‘look’, ‘full’. It is not like the American English pronunciation ‘sofa’.

CONSONANTS

Romanization  IPA Symbol Description
b [b] as in boy
 
c [k] as in car
 
ç [tʃ] as in chair
 
d [d] as in duck
 
f [f] as in far
 
g [g] as in girl (never soft like the g in page)
 
h [h] as in hair (always pronounced fully with one two exceptions: 1. between two of the same vowels; 2. as a part of the digraphs sh and th)
 
j [ʒ] as in French je
 
k [dʒ] as the j in just
 
l [l] as in light
 
m [m] as in mom
 
n [n] as in North
 
p [p] as in pest
 
r [ʀ] as in the French rien
 
s [s] as in sun
 
sh [ʃ] as in shore
 
t [t] as in time
 
th [ð] as in father (not th as in thin)
 
v [v] as in vain
 
w [w] as in West (always a w even when combined with a vowel or consonant)
 
x [r] trilled R as in Italian rapido (in old Tapissary, it was the guttural ch as in German Nacht)
 
y [j] as in yes (always a y even when combined with a vowel or consonant)
 
z [z] as in, you guessed it, zebra
 
z̈ [ː] this lengthens the preceding vowel

Pronunciation rules:

All tonic accents fall on the last syllable of the word (this is the same as in French). The exception is when a vowel precedes a doubled consonant, that vowel is accented.

Example, I will capitalize the accented syllables:

xir tuROZ biñ meTHITR biñVWERY XAmmar? (Can we add something spicy? Literally: we can a spicy something add?)

Note that XA is accented even though it is not the last syllable of the word, because a double mm follows XA. Also, as described above, do not pronounce the final Y on the word biñvwery as an ee. It is a fully consonantal Y sound. Vwery is one syllable, not two. Getting used to pronouncing the full Y, H, and W when combined with another letter takes a bit of practice. They are what give that breezy quality to spoken Tapissary.

Generally you pronounce Tapissary as it is written, however when an H, W or Y are surrounded by the same vowel, a natural transition occurs, that of elongating the pronunciation of the vowel and the H, W or Y will follow them. So having a word containing AWA in it would sound more like AAW. Yes, please pronounce that W. Here’s another sentence that contains such an example:

CabouLÉX yë struIY siñYTIÑ masçoTSOV ze çëhaha. (çëhaha is usually pronounced çëHAAH)

The above sentence in English: Let me help you with the salad.

(This sentence is rendered into the cycle with this understood formula: 2>2, and literally means: Let-! I build you-into help-with the salad-contains.)

Doubled Vowels

The doubled vowels indicate the indirect object. Please see ‘Prepositions’ in the Basic Grammar tab for explanation.

I have capitalized the vowels that get the tonic accent in the chart above. The Ëi, for example, shows you the Ë is louder than the i that follows it. iË by contrast is where the i is soft, and the ë is loudest. Capitalization here simply says where the accent goes. It's as if I'd written the verb in English 'presEnt' which means to show someone something, but the noun 'prEsent' means a gift. So where you put the accent in Tapissary is as important as where you put it in English.