1.1 you can see a chart position of the vowels in Novoslovnica.
Vowels in Novoslovnica
In this table you can also see different vowels are font-styled differently. The bold ones are for rounded vowels. The normal ones are for unrounded vowels.
If you know Czech or Finnish, you might be concerned by the absence long vowels in this chart. It’s time to speak about allophones in Novoslovnica.
Novoslovnica has allophones of open and long vowels. This means that it does not matter how you pronounce a «modified» vowel – as a long one or as an open one – the meaning of the word will not change. To make this more clear, look at table 1.2.
Long-vowel allophones in Novoslovnica
Exception:
o̞ (only one modified vowel – ɯ)
Examples:
Buda [`buda] (Buddha)
búda [`bu: da] (building) – [`bʊda]
If you have some knowledge about Slavic languages and their origins, you should know that the Proto-Slavic language had nasal vowels, which we can nowadays be found in Polish and Lithuanian. Do they exist in Novoslovnica? Of course they do! There are two allophones for pronouncing nasal vowels. The first one is actually a nasal vowel, when you pronounce an ordinary vowel through your nose. The second is more common, such as in French, when you add a nasal consonant [ŋ] to an ordinary vowel. Look at the sounds on the next table.
Examples:
Dųb (oak) [dõb] – [duŋb]
Męso (meet) [`mɛ̃so] – [`meŋso]
As you can see, Novoslovnica distinguishes between nasal vowels in two categories – O-nasality (hard) and E-nasality (soft).
The last topic that we will speak of pertaining to vowels, is the firmness and the softness of the vowels. Scientists argue about what is primary in making sound soft or hard – consonants or vowels. Novoslovnica claim vowels are softer or hard primarily, although consonants itself also can be either soft or hard.
There are vowels that tend to make their surrounding soft and there are vowels that tend to make their surrounding hard. As you already know, there are two nasal vowels – one hard (O-nasality) and one soft (E-nasality). However, there are other pairs of hard / soft vowels among ordinary ones. Look at table 1.4 for more information.
Hard and soft vowels
Examples:
Dodatek (addition) [do`datek]
Smërtj (death) [sme̞rc]
There is only one vowel that has no pair in softness / hardness. It is ə. This vowel is named the «schwa» sound and it can be described as the most «middle» sound among vowels. To pronounce it you should relax your oral cavity and pronounce a sound with weakened muscles. This is the «schwa» sound.
Consonants
In this paragraph about consonants, I would like to begin with the definition of a consonant.
Consonant (C) – a sound that is articulated with complete or particular closure of the vocal tract.
Likewise vowels, consonants have three characteristics that determine their position in your articulation. These three parameters are:
• Place, where the consonant is pronounced in the mouth
• Manner, how the consonant is pronounced
• Sonority, whether you use your vocal cords or not
Place of the consonant can be quite different. Here are possible types: Bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex, alveolo-palatal, palatal, labio-velar, velar. There are more types, but they do not exist in Novoslovnica.
Manner is the way how you pronounce the sound. There are also different manners, that are used in Novoslovnica. They are: nasal, stop, affricate (sibilant), sibilant fricative, non-sibilant fricative, approximant, trill, lateral approximant.
Sonority is the boolean attribute of pronunciation. You can either use your voice with the sound you pronounce or not. Notice that vowels cannot be pronounced without the use of your voice.
Combining these three parameters, we get the unique consonant that we want to pronounce. We cannot draw a 3-dimensional table, because there are three parameters on input, so we will combine information into 2-dimensional space as in paragraph about vowels. So, look at the figure and see the different consonants that are used in Novoslovnica.
Consonant sounds in Novoslovnica
Different colors of the cells show the sonority of the consonant. Yellow color shows that the sound is voiced, while green ones are for voiceless sounds.
Blue cells in the table show that sounds in it can be used both in voiced and voiceless forms as allophones.
Novoslovnica has 51 consonants, 21 of them are voiceless and 30 are voiced.
However, not all of these consonants are language phonemes. So, let’s talk about the allophones among these sounds.
Consonant allophones in Novoslovnica
Exception: The sound θ has no pair, because its pair ð has never been used in Slavic languages.
Likewise vowels, consonants can be compared with each other in terms of softness / hardness. The common rule is that every consonant has its soft or hard partner.
Exception: Two sounds are exceptions to this rule.
• Also nasal velar consonant ŋ has no soft pair.
• And vice versa, the sound j is soft and has no hard pair.
Remember this exception, let’s look at the table 1.7 to get acquainted with pairs of consonants.
Hard and soft consonant allophones
As you see, every consonant from table has its own soft pair. The soft consonant is usually written as a hard consonant with the sound j attached, but some of them are provided as unique sounds by IPA, because in some languages they can be phonemes.8
There were some attempts to use IPA for creating a language alphabet. Thus, history of IPA itself dates back to the Romic alphabet in 1887 when it was suggested to use a phonetical alphabet for English. Also there were some other attempts for western language to use symbols that further became IPA units.
