Lesson 1 — Sounds and spelling
Basalo's alphabet consists of 19 letters; 14 consonants and 5 vowels:
p, t, k, b, d, g, f, s, c, v, l, y, m, n
a, i, u, e, o
Sounds
The unique thing about Basalo is that its sounds are able to be pronounced a variety of ways. Most are pronounced the same as in English:
- p, t, k — like in pay, take, king
- b, d, g — like in bay, darn, game
- f — like in famous
- m, n — like in morning, noon
- y — like in year, yawn
- a — like in father
- i — like in teeth or bit
- u — like in tooth or foot
- e — like in bet
- o — like in oh
Never pronounce vowels as an 'uh' sound, like in but!
A couple are pronounced sometimes like in English, but with some variations:
- s — like in sat, but also like think, that, and zap
- v — like in vine, but also like wine
- l — like in lake, but also like rake
And the last one is pronounced much differently than in English:
- c — like in church or jump
Stress
Basalo has no contrasting stress; there's no difference between words like permit versus permit, like in English. Generally, any syllable can be stressed.
Examples
We'll look at a few words in Basalo and how to pronounce them:
| Basalo | Meaning | Pronunciation |
|---|---|---|
| yati | speak | YAH-tee |
| kitap | book | KEE-tahp |
| salam | person | SAH-lahm, SAH-rahm |
| un | one | OON |
| ceba | sit | CHEH-bah, JEH-bah |
| neya | thanks! | NEH-yah |
| din | place | DEEN |
| fas | make | FAHS, FAHZ |
| ven | warm | WEHN, VEHN |
| taga | day | TAH-gah |
Capitalization and punctuation
In Basalo, the beginnings of sentences are capitalized, as well as names of people and places (especially if preceded by o). Beyond that, Basalo uses other punctuation, like question marks, exclamation points, periods, and commas.
- Imut sin! — "Good to see you!"
- Sin e mea amal, o Jon! — "Meet my friend, John!"
- Ka me kan e lel? — "Can I have it?"
- Me kisa, ga lel yo u. — "I think that he's there." (note: the comma here is optional)