Letters and Sounds

Basic principles of phonology and alphabet

1. The text is read letter by letter exactly as it is written. No voiced sounds are devoiced, no vowel reduction is used.

2. The sounds should be reproduced without great difficulty by speakers of Slavic and Romano-Germanic languages

3. One sound must correspond to one letter

Deviations from these principles do occur, but they are few.

Alphabet (basic letters):

In addition to these basic letters, additional letters are used: w, y, ċ, and others. These letters are used in words borrowed from languages that use the Latin script.

The LPQR language allows for different spelling variants of words, so additional letters can always be replaced by basic ones.

yacht - jaht

whisky - viski

Letter-sound correspondence table

The table shows the basic pronunciation of letters and letter combinations. In words borrowed from languages using the Latin script, letters may be read differently. To indicate non-standard pronunciation, diacritics may be optionally used; for example, the sign " ċ " is read as "[k]". Since LPQR allows for multiple spellings of words, such letters can always be replaced.

canis - ċanis - kanis

jeans - džǐnsǐ

chips - čipsǐ

(affiche) - aficha- afiša

All vowel sounds are long

The LPQR conlang is based on the Russian language, in which the opposition of the sounds "и” → “ы” is of great importance.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to get away from this opposition and it was necessary to retain the difficult to pronounce sound [ ɨ ]

Since all vowel sounds are long, double consonants in the root of a word are not possible in the LPQR language. 

Consonants can be voiced or unvoiced, hard or soft.

As we have already indicated, voiced consonants are never devoiced.

Consonants are pronounced as soft sounds when followed by the letters “i” or “j”.

The letter "j" produces the sound "[j]" when placed at the beginning of a word, after a vowel, or after an apostrophe. If the letter "j" follows a consonant, it is not pronounced but softens the consonant, like the soft sign in Russian. The letter "j" can be preceded by an apostrophe, which corresponds to the hard sign in Russian.

The letters “c” and “ž” represent only the hard sound and are never used before the letters “i” or “j”.

The letter “č”, on the other hand, always represents only a soft sound, and is always followed by the letters “i” or “j”.

If the letter “š” is followed by the letters “i” or “j,” this letter represents the soft sound “[ɕː]” (corresponding to the Russian letter “щ”) or the sound combination [​ ʃ ​t͡ʃ ​j ]. In other cases, the letter “š” represents the sound [​ ʃ ] (corresponding to the Russian letter “ш”).