Letters and sounds
Alphabet
Pandunia is written in the basic Latin alphabet – the same as English! It doesn't have any of the accented letters, which are different from language to language. That's why it can be typed, printed and used with most computers and smart devices in the world without any difficulty.
There are 24 letters in the Pandunia alphabet:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V X Y Z
Other letters, like Q and W, are foreign to Pandunia.
They can be present only in names and culture-specific words, which are not part of the normal Pandunia vocabulary.
Written Pandunia follows the one letter = one sound principle. Therefore, Pandunia is phonetic in two directions:
- When you read a word, you can always pronounce it.
- When you hear a word, you can always write it.
Once you have learned the way letters are pronounced, you can read Pandunia aloud and be understood.
Pandunia has 5 vowel sounds and 18 consonant sounds. The number of vowels is average, and the number of consonants is moderately small among world's languages. (In average there are 5–6 vowels and 19–25 consonants.) Therefore it is relatively easy to pronounce the sounds of Pandunia.
Vowels
The vowel sounds in Pandunia are a, e, i, o, u and they are pronounced as in are there three or two. Consecutive vowels are pronounced independently.
Consonants
Pandunia has eighteen consonants. There are in average 19–25 consonants in world's languages, so the consonant inventory in Pandunia is moderately small.
Consonants need to be accompanied by a vowel to make a complete syllable. Two of the consonants are semivowels, which sound like very short vowels, but which behave like consonants. The Pandunia letter y sounds like the English y in the word yet, and the Pandunia letter v sounds like the English w in wet.
The consonant letters p, b, t, d, k, f, s, z, j, h, m, n, l, y sound like in English generally. g is always hard as in get. r is never silent and it is preferably trilled as in Scottish and Indian English. The Pandunia letter c sounds like the letter combination ch in the English word church. Finally, the Pandunia letter x sounds the same as in English but it can be simplified to s in the beginning of a syllable and before another consonant, as in xenon /senon/ and exter /ester/.
Speech sound inventory
The complete speech sound inventory of Pandunia is presented with phonetic symbols in the table below.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | b [b] p [b] | t [t] d [d] | k [k] g [g] | |
| Affricates | c [tʃ] j [dʒ] | |||
| Fricatives | f [f] | s [s] z [z] | h [x ~ h] | |
| Nasals | m [m] | n [n] | ||
| Lateral | l [l] | |||
| Trill | r [r ~ ɹ] | |||
| Semivowels | v [w ~ ʋ] | y [j] | ||
| High vowels | u [u] | i [i] | ||
| Mid vowels | o [o̞] | e [e̞] | ||
| Low vowels | a [a] | |||
| Back | Central | Front |
Note: The post-alveolar affricates c [tɕ] and j [dʑ] can be also pronounced as alveolo-palatal affricates [tʃ] and [dʒ], as post-alveolar fricatives [ʃ] and [ʒ], or as alveolo-palatal fricatives [ɕ] and [ʑ].
External letters and sounds
There are also additional letters and letter-combinations, which can be used only in external words, which do not belong to the ordinary vocabulary of Pandunia, like names of places and people. They are not used in any common Pandunia words.
- ch = [tʃ]
Like ch in church. - kh = [x]
Voiceless velar fricative, like ch in Loch in Scottish. - gh = [ɣ]
Voiced velar fricative - ph = [ɸ]
Voiceless bilabial fricative - bh = [β] Voiced bilabial fricative
- q = [q]
Voiceless uvular stop. - qh = [χ] Voiceless uvular fricative.
- rh = [ʀ] ~ [ʁ]
Voiced uvular trill or fricative like rh in rhume in Parisian French. - th = [θ]
Like th in thing. - dh = [ð]
Like th in they. - sh = [ʃ]
Like sh in shop. - zh = [ʒ]
Like z in azure. - w = = [w] ~ [ʋ] ~ [v]
W is pronounced the same as v.
The additional letters and digraphs are used locally. Their purpose is to help to transfer names in local languages to the international language, so that local people can recognize them. It's OK if you don't know how to pronounce any of these sounds. The letters q and w can be pronounced the same as k and v, and all digraphs can be pronunced as if the h was not there. So, for example, zh can be pronounced simply as z in the simplified international accent.
For example, the capital of Greece is called "Αθήνα" /aθina/ in the local language, Greek. The Pandunia version of this name is "Athina". It can be pronounced either /aθina/ (as the Greek do) or /atina/ (in the simplified international accent).
Word Structure
Pandunia words have a rather simple structure.
Syllables are structured (C)(L)V(S)(C) where
Cis a consonant.Lis a liquid consonant (l or r) or a semivowel (i or u).Vis a vowel.Sis a semivowel (i or u),- Sounds between brackets are optional.
In the table below there are some syllables from the lightest to the heaviest. Each of them is also a word in Pandunia.
| Syllable | (C) | (L) | V | (S) | (C) | Word meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | a | 'at' | ||||
| ai | a | i | 'ow!' | |||
| an | a | n | 'un-' | |||
| pa | p | a | 'father' | |||
| pai | p | a | i | 'pie' | ||
| pan | p | a | n | 'all' | ||
| plan | p | l | a | n | 'plan' |
Adapting Loan Words
As a general rule, loan words are adapted to the phonetic spelling system of Pandunia. This rule is applied to both common words and proper names.
Common words
A common word refers to a thing as a member of a group, not as an individual. For example dog is a common word but Sam is not, it is a proper name.
Common words, which are in general use, must fit into the normal word structure, and they must have only the normal sounds of Pandunia.
Many Pandunia words are structurally simpler than the corresponding English words. Difficult consonant clusters are avoided in the beginning, middle and end of words, so psyche is sike, act is ate, and saint is sante in Pandunia.
Proper names
Proper nouns and rarely used common nouns can be more complex than ordinary words. They can even include sounds that don't belong to the normal sound inventory of Pandunia.
For example, family name Smith may remain Smith in Pandunia, although it is structurally more complex than normal Pandunia words, and it has the external th sound. However, foreign people probably will pronounce this name incorrectly. Therefore it is advisable to adapt also proper names to the phonetic system of Pandunia.
Large and small Letters
Pandunia has its own rules for using the large letters (i.e. upper-case letters) and the small letters (i.e. lower-case letters).
The only case when large letters are absolutely necessary is writing standard international acronyms, because using wrong letter-case could result into wrong meaning. For example, 1 mm (un milimitre) means 'one thousandth of a metre' and 1 Mm (un megamitre) means 'one million metres'. Otherwise all text in Pandunia can be written in small letters. In particular, the first letter of sentences is not capitalized!
There are three reasons why large letters and rules about their usage are not necessary.
- Writing represents speech and there are no "capital letters" in speech. Yet understanding spoken words is as easy as understanding written words in spite of this "shortcoming".
- Most of the scripts and alphabets of the world have only one letter type, i.e. they don't have separate large and small letters.
- It is simpler to use only small letters. No need for special rules for capitalization.
Proper names
Proper names may be capitalized according to the writers preference. Family names may be written completely in large letters. It is helpful because names are written in different way from language to language and they can include several given names and family names. However, all names may be written completely in small letters too.
Examples of written names:
(1) ludoviko lazaro zamenhof, edgar de val, mizuta sentaro
(2) Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof, Edgar de Val, Mizuta Sentaro
(3) Ludoviko Lazaro ZAMENHOF, Edgar de VAL, MIZUTA Sentaro
Acronyms
Initialisms, like ASEAN, EU, NAFTA and UN, are always written in large letters. Other acronyms may use a mixture of large and small letters, like for example GULag, which is an acronym of the Russian words "Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerey".
Capital letters are also used in the standard international acronyms. For example: 10 Mb (des megabite), 100 GB (sento gigabaite), 2 mm (du milimitre), 1 kJ (un kilojul).
Syllabification
« - » Words may be divided into syllables with a hyphen. The hyphen is placed between spoken syllables. For example: bus, ka-fe, hu-mor, pos-te, hi-drar-gen-te.
Punctuation
« . » All kinds of sentences may end with a full stop.
« ? » Questions may end alternatively with a question mark.
« ! » Exclamation mark indicates loudness or emphasis.
« ... » Three dots (i.e. ellipsis) indicates incompleteness or uncertainty.
« : » Colon indicates the beginning of an explanation, quotation or list.
« , » Comma indicates a small pause or separation between clauses or listed items.
Tip! Because the first word of sentences is not capitalized, sentences can be set apart with more than one space. One may (1) insert two spaces after the punctuation mark, or (2) insert one space before and after the punctuation mark. This practice helps to separate sentences more clearly.
(1) sal! tu hao, he? mi voli go do kafekan. tu voli lai kon mi, he?
(2) sal ! tu hao, he ? mi voli go do kafekan . tu voli lai kon mi, he ?
In informal texts, smileys, emoticons and emojis may be used instead of punctuation marks to end sentences but in addition they indicate the mood of the speaker.