Vowels
- a as in mAtzah
- e as in pEst*
- I as in Itch*
- o as in grOW
- u as in fOOd
- ay as in AYE, AYE!
- ey as in thEY
* even at the end of
a syllable or a word
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Consonants
- q as in English Cool but in the back of the throat
(uvular),
as in Arabic Qibla 'direction to Mecca',
or Iñupiak Qiviut 'musk-ox underfur'.
- tlh as in Aztec teTL 'egg':
a t released into a voiceless lateral fricative.
The lateral part is a sort of hissing whispered l,
like Welsh ll, Zulu hl, or Sindarin lh.
- r is lightly trilled.
- j as in JuDGe.
- H as in CHutzpah, loCH, or BaCH.
- ch as in ouCH.
- gh is like H but voiced, like modern Greek gamma in aGia 'holy (fem.)',
or Yiddish r in some pronunciations,
or Black Speech aGH 'and'.
- ' (apostrophe) is a glottal stop, pronounced even at the end
of a syllable or word:
Biblical Hebrew aleph;
Arabic 'alif;
the hyphen in uh-uh, as opposed to the second h in uh-huh;
the German Knacklaut in words such as beeilen 'hurry'
(between the e and the ei).
- S and D are retroflex, pronounced with the tip of the tongue
bent up to touch the palate.
Retroflex S is common in standard or Beijing Mandarin Chinese; it
is written sh in pinyin, as in shàng 'up'.
Retroflex D is common in languages of India and is often heard for
"d" in Indian English.
- Other consonants are as in English.
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