Mirad/Orthography and Pronunciation

Orthography and Pronunciation

Alphabet

The Mirad alphabet has both lower-case and upper-case letters. The alphabet has the same base letters as Latin or English, except that the letters Qq, Xx, and Yy are considered non-native and are used only in foreign names and borrowings. Also, the letters Hh and Ww are additional to Agapoff's original Unilingua alphabet and are unique in that they have no inherent semantic values; they are used for various grammatical-only purposes. A unique feature of Mirad is that every native letter is a semantically-significant atom in the language and can be thought of as bricks in lexical construction. See Word-building

The order of the native alphabet is as follows:

a á à â b c d e é è ê f g h i í ì î j k l m n o ó ò ô p r s t u ú ù û v w z

The above lower-case letters can also be represented as upper-case letters. In Unicode representations and indexing, the uppercase graphemes precede the lowercase values. Uppercase letters are used much as in American English, that is, for the first letter in sentences, proper nouns, etc. See #Orthography for more details. As mentioned above, the Mirad graphemes Ww and Hh are additional to the letters in the original Unilingua and are used to form the passive voice of verbs and the correlative deictics, respectively. Foreign names and borrowings sometimes also incorporate Hh, Qq, Xx, and Yy.

Consonants

The following are classified as consonants:

b c d f g h j k l m n p r s t v w z

*Note: The author of Unilingua did not include the letters Hh or Ww as native graphemes. They have been added in Mirad in order to encompass word structures not included by Agapoff, in addition to interjections and foreign names. See more on this under #Vowels.

Vowels

Vowels, or more accurately, vowel nuclei consist of plain vowels and yodified vowels, that is, vowels that have a y-glide sound before, after, or around them. A synonym of yodified is palatalized.

The plain vowels are (only miniscules listed here):

a e i o u

The yodified vowel nuclei are:

á é í ó ú   (pre-yodified)

à è ì ò ù   (post-yodified)

â ê î ô û   (circum-yodified)

Note: The author of Unilingua used non-Roman letters to represent some of the pre-yodified vowels (я = á, е = é, ø = ó, and ю = ú. The author employed a hacek (called ille in French) over the vowel to represent post-yodification (ă = à, ě = è, etc.). This revised Mirad textbook, however, uses the acute accent (as in French été) for the pre-yodified vowels, the grave accent (as in French père) for the post-yodified vowels, and the circumflex accent (as in French fête) for the circum-yodified vowels. It must be remembered, however, that á, ô, and other yodified vowels are considered single vowels or vowel nuclei in any analysis of the language, not dipthongs or tripthongs). In other words, the accents are merely graphemic devices to distinguish vowels qualitatively, and thereby semantically.

Orthography

Punctuation

Despite Agapoff's idiosyncratic system of punctuation, the punctuation symbols and usage in Mirad are just like those of American English.

Capitalization

Capitalization in Mirad follows the same rules as in English. European learners need to be especially careful to capitalize the first letter of the names of languages, nationalities, and inhabitants, which in most European languages are left in lowercase.

Note the following examples. The words are all capitalized because the root word is the name of the country China:

Mirad	English
Kin	China
Kina	Chinese (people or nation) [adj.]
Kinad	Chinese (language) [n.]
Kinada	Chinese (language) [adj.]
Kinadè	in Chinese [adv.]
Kinut	Chinese person
Kinadaer	to speak Chinese (pronounced: kee-nah-dah-EHR)
Kinader	to utter in Chinese
Kinadrer	to write Chinese
Kinadrun	Chinese writing
Kina vidrun	Chinese calligraphy
Kinadéder	to read Chinese
Kinéna	Chinese-like [adj.]
Kinénà	in the Chinese way [adv.]
Kin-Amerika véani	Sino-American relations
Kinconi	things Chinese (pronounced: keen-SOH-nee)
Kinaser	to sinofy (pronounced: kee-nah-SHEHR)
Kintun	Sinology (pronounced: keen-TOON)
Kintuna	Sinological
Kintut	Sinologist

Pronunciation

Consonant sounds

This chart shows the closest phonetic approximations of the Mirad consonant graphemes in English and some other familiar languages, along with the exact value in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet):

grapheme	IPA	English	American Spanish	French	Comment
b	b	bee	bien	bon
c	s	see	hace	garçon	Watch out! Sounds like "s".
d	d	dog	dos	de
f	f	foo	fiesta	fou
g	g	goo	goma	gant	Always hard.
h	h	how	jota	--	Closer to the English value.
j	ʒ	mirage	--	jour	As in "Dr. Zhivago.
k	k	skate	casa	comment
l	l	law	la	les
m	m	moo	mi	mon
n	n	no	no	non
p	p	spoon	poco	peu
r	r	--	toro	--	Dental flap or trill
s	ʃ	shed	--	chaise	A fricative "sh" sound!
t	t	steak	tú	ton
v	v	vie	--	va
w	w	woo	Juan	oui
z	z	zoo	--	zone

Note! Be very careful that the c and the s are not pronounced as their English or European equivalents. Think of the c as being the French c cedilla (ç).

Simple vowel sounds

a as in Spanish la (IPA:/a/)

e as in French thé (IPA:/e/)

i as in Spanish sí! (IPA:/i/)

o as in Spanish no (IPA:/o/)

u as in Spanish tú (IPA:/u/)

Pre-yodified vowel sounds

These vowels are pronounced the same as the simple vowel above, but with a y-glide at the beginning.

á is like ya as in English yacht

é is like ye as in German jeder or English yes

í is like yi as in French yippie or English ye (without the final y-glide)

ó is like yo as in German Joga or English yo-yo (without the final w-glide)

ú is like yu as in German Juli or English unit

Post-yodified vowel sounds

These vowels are pronounced like the simple vowels, but with a y-glide at the end.

à is like ay as in English Thai

è is like ey as in English fey

ì is like iy as in English see

ò is like oy as in English boy

ù is like uy as in English fooey

Circum-yodified vowel sounds

These vowels are pronounced with a y-glide at both the beginning and end.

â is like yay as in English yikes!

ê is like yey as in English yea!

î is like yiy

ô is like yoy

û is like yuy

Note the difference in pronunciation between aá, which is pronounced like A-ya as in Spanish "playa", and àa, which sounds like AY-a as in English diagram.)

Syllabification and Stress

A closed syllable is one that ends in a consonant or a y-glide (i.e., a post- or circum-yodified vowel). A syllable consists of [C]V[C], where V, the vowel nucleus, can begin or end with a y-glide, but contain only one of the set of vowels [aeiou], and where C consists of one or two homorganic consonants, i.e. [bcdfgjknpstvz]+[lrwy].

The rule for stress is: If a word ends in a closed syllable, then the last syllable receives the stress, otherwise, the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable receives the stress.

spelling	pronunciation	meaning
gafif	ga-FIF	preference
ifla	I-fla	agreeable
ánsea	yan-SHE-a	collective
manà	ma-NAY	with light
Kinadae	ki-na-DA-e	speaks Chinese
Kinad	ki-NAD	Chinese (language)
Hàfa	HAY-fa	(Israeli town of) Haifa
gracer	gra-SER	to be extreme

Every vowel in Mirad is given its full syllabic pronunciation, even when juxtaposed in what English or European speakers might consider dipthongs:

spelling	pronunciation	meaning	syllable count
daea	da-E-a	speaking	3
oif	o-If	displeasure	2
daò	da-OY	without saying	2

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