The Alphabet

Behold, the alphabet!

hnrlmpbfvtdszcjkgieaou'

It is comprised of 16 consonants, 5 vowels, h and ' (the word-boundary-marker). This comes to a grand total of 23 letters.

Pronunciation

Eberban is phonetic, that is, each letter is pronounced and only pronounced one way. Here’s how your pronunce them:

LetterPronunciationIPA
h[h]
Β 
n[n]
r[Ι£]
l[l]
Β 
m[m]
p[p]
b[b]
f[f]
v[v]
t[t]
d[d]
s[s]
z[z]
c[Κƒ]
j[Κ’]
k[k]
g[Ι‘]
Β 
i[i]
e[Ι›]
a[a]
o[o]
u[u]
Β 
'(.)

πŸͺΆ Jargon: IPA

The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a set of unique symbols designed to denote all the sounds of human speech.

All IPA notation in this course will be surrounded with [] or ().

As you can see, the single quote character represents the word-boundary-marker. There is no preference as to which kind of single quote you use, any similarly-looking ones are accepted. ' is spelt as β€œuhu” but pronounced as a pause.

Also, note that the combination of the letters β€œtc” and β€œdj” match the English pronunciation of β€œch” and β€œj” respectively.

Alternative pronunciations

If the word-boundary-marker is before a word that starts with a vowel, then you have the option of pronouncing it as a glottal stop (heard in the word β€œuh-oh”).

You may use glides and alongside or instead of vowels β€œi” and β€œu” respectively.

An English speaker will likely struggle with pronouncing the letter r. There are two alternative trill pronunciations:

  • The Spanish r
  • The French r

If you’re struggling with pronunciation, just remember that as long as the uttered sound is close to the preferred or listed alternative and cannot be confused for another letter, then you’re doing just fine.

The roles of the letters

The alphabet was ordered to be culturally neutral. The order also groups the letters into different types.

The letter h stands in its own role. It is only seen between vowels and neither begins nor ends words.

The next three letters (n, r, and l) are sonorants. This is an important distinction. Sonorants never begin a word.

πŸͺΆ Jargon: Sonorants

In phonetics, a sonorant is any sound in speech that can be continuously produced without interruption. The sonorants in the Eberban alphabet are n, r, l, m, and all the vowels.

An Eberban sonorant refers to any of the three consonants n, r, or l. Henceforth, the usage of β€œsonorant” will refer to an Eberban sonorant.

Then there are the consonants. Except for m, the rest of the consonants are grouped into unvoiced and voiced pairs. This ranges from sounds made in the front of the mouth (p, b) to sounds made in the back (k, g).

You may have even noticed that the pronunciations of the unvoiced consonants end in β€œi”, and that the spellings of the voiced consonants end in β€œu”.

πŸͺΆ Jargon: Voicing Consonants

Consonants are either voiced or unvoiced. As you may have guessed, voiced consonants are made with the voice, and unvoiced consonants are made just with air.

Try putting your hand up to your throat and uttering some consonants. You will feel the vibrations from your voice box when the consonant is voiced!

The vowels play two roles. Each will be explained in later chapters:

  • Their single-lettered presence or absence at the beginning of a word denotes its wordΒ type.
  • Except for β€œi”, they are used to denote predicateΒ places.

The word-boundary-marker is the only punctuation used in Eberban. It is only required under a couple of circumstances, and may not be used twice in a row.

Informally-written Eberban

Eberban makes allowances for more expression in informal writing.

Except for foreign text quotes, Eberban text, as you have seen, is written in lowercase. Uppercase can be used informally to convey volume, such as when yelling.

Repeated letters in succession are considered the same as a single letter that was repeated. Such repetition is used informally to denote the spoken length of sounds.

This is what it looks like in English:

  • heyyyyyyyyyy
  • thaaaaaaaanks

And in Eberban:

  • pou ga snaaaaaaaaa (Welcooooome)
  • nnnnnnnnn (uhhhhhhhh)

Although any character not in the alphabet is considered a space, punctuation from other languages can be used informally. This includes but is not limited to " around quotes, and . at the end of sentences.

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