Re: Eklektu: An Introduction

[hmiller@io.com (Herman Miller)]

>> kh	[x]	no English equivalent:  as in Spanish "Jaguar" (jaguar)
>
>I suggest you use a German word here, like "Bach".
>
>> o	[o]	as in "Orangutan"
>
>You may pronounce it [o], but I've heard it [@], [@U], [O], and I some 
>times pronounce it like 'er' in American  English.
>
>Try 'boat' or 'kosher' or something.

Well, I started with "aardvark" and "bat", and I just got carried away with 
the animal names.  "Orangutan" is a particularly bad example, since the 
unstressed o does tend to get reduced to [@].  Actually there aren't any 
good English examples for [o] (as opposed to Amer. [ou], Brit. [@U], so I'd 
probably be better off giving a Spanish example.

Actually, if I were to write something for a more general audience, I'd 
probably describe the basic phonetics in as non-technical language as 
possible, and provide voice samples if possible.  But so far I haven't quite 
fixed the set of vowel phonemes for Eklektu, and I may even include "ue" and 
"oe" for front rounded vowels.  (So many languages have front rounded vowels 
that it gets awkward borrowing words from them.)

Ideally, I'd just use IPA, but my software doesn't make that very easy.

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