Phonetics

The standard Novan pronunciation described here is the one from the most common pronunciation scheme, the tongue and teeth.

The Novan is a mainly vocalic language, based on a set of 5 vowel and 12 consonant sounds arranged in 5 groups.

For ease of reading, the runes will here be represented by their romanization. See Novan alphabet for the corresponding runes.

## Word phonemic structure and consonant groups

#### Consonant groups

Novan consonants are divided in 5 groups, which are used for the 3 rules of the phonemic structure:

* **breath group** consonants are pronounced as a sonorous expiration;
* **tongue group** consonants are pronounced with the tongue against the teeth (officially known as sibilants);
* **nose group** consonants are pronounced in the nose (officially known as nasals);
* **throat group** consonants are pronounced in the "throat", the back of the mouth (officially known as velars);
* **central group** consonants are the 4 remaining consonants, which are neither particularly pronounced in the nose, throat or with the tongue.

The **nose**, **tongue** and **throat** groups form the  **peripheral consonants**.

#### Phonemic structure

The phonemic structure of words is the allowed sequences of sounds to form a word. In Novan, words follow a (C)V(C) phonemic structure (optional consonant, vowel, optional consonant), meaning a word can be any sequence of vowels (V), with each vowel possibly having a consonant (C) before and after. We write for example *etruske* as VC-CVC-CV (*et-rus-ke*).

There are however 3 constraints:

* **no-duplication rule:** a consonant cannot appear twice in a row in one word;
* **peripheral** **groups rule:** tongue, nose and throat consonants can not follow consonants of the same group, and can not be followed by consonants of the same group; in contrast, central consonants (non peripheral) can follow any consonant, and be followed by any consonant, they can be considered an exception to the group rule;
* **breath rule:** in any case, the breath consonant can follow any consonant, but an not be followed by a consonant (in other words, once a h appears, either the next sound is a vowel or the word ends).

#### Examples

The following examples are valid Novan words according to the set of rules:

* *ifxit* (VC-CVC);
* *Taxfen* (CVC-CVC);
* *tog* (CVC).

The following examples are not valid Novan words according to the set of rules:

* *\*txue*: breach of the (C)V(C) pattern: we have CCV-V; *rue*, *tue* (both CV-V) and *etrue* (VC-CV-V) would be valid;
* *\*sadde* : breach of the no-duplication rule: we have two *d* following each other; *sad de* would be valid because those are 2 different words;
* *\*axke*: breach of the peripheral groups rule: *x* and *k* are both throat consonants;
* *\*ahke*: breach of the breath rule: *h* is followed by a consonant; *akhe* and *ah ke* would be valid however.

#### Borrowed words

The only exception to these rules are foreign words (borrowings) and in particular proper nouns. However, they tend to be Novan-ized by removing duplicate consonants and adding vowels where necessary.

Also, as one could expect, consonants (and vowels) are approximated by Novan ones:

* *Iffrit* would becomes *Ifxit*;
* *Darven* would becomes *Taxfen*;
* *foreign* would becomes *foxein*;
* *cringe* would becomes *kexinse*.

## Chart

The vowels and consonants of the Novan languages are usually represented with the "lifted head" chart.

The chart is called in this manner because a lifted head can be superposed on the chart and match the groups: the nose group in the nasal cavity, the tongue group around the teeth, the central and breath groups in the center and the throat group in the throat. The vowels would then be around the vocal chords.

## Correspondence with IPA

### Vowels

See IPA vowel chart with audio for a pronunciation example of each standard IPA example.

Novan vowels
 e
 a
 o
 u

### Consonants

See IPA consonant chart with audio for a pronunciation example of each standard IPA example.