Letoa Phonemes

Letoa phonemes are drawn from natural languages across the planet Toa where they are common. Some are less common on Earth but cultural factors play a role in designing auxiliary languages on both Toa and Earth.

Letoa has twenty-six phonemes. Eight are vowels and sixteen are consonants. They are arranged in simple syllables. Their canonical sounds are given below along with some common variations licensed by the Letoa Academy. Variations are not normally reflected in writing.

Letoa is transcribed here in the Roman alphabet.

Vowels

Letoa uses the five classic vowel positions familiar on Earth. There is an oral vowel at each position. There are also three nasal vowels.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i, ĩ		u, ũ
Middle	e		o
Open		a, ã

Vowels should keep the same sound in all positions. All vowels are pronounced in full. So words like kai or kua have two syllables, not one. Diphthongs are sometimes heard in rapid speech but the practice is discouraged.

Where two identical vowels meet in compounding, one is deleted.

Adjacent vowels should share the same orality. If one of the pair is nasal the other should be nasal too. This applies across word boundaries unless a pause intervenes. E and o nasalise to ĩ and ũ respectively.

Three variations in vowel quality are licensed, though dispreferred:

In many areas, middle vowels are mid-close or mid-open for some or all of the time. So /e̞ , o̞ / become /e, o/ or /ɛ, ɔ/.

A few areas raise unstressed a, ã to /ɐ, ɐ̃/.

I, u, ĩ and ũ often reduce to /j, w, ɲ and w̃ / between vowels including at word boundaries unless a pause intervenes. The Letoa Academy is currently considering a proposal to make this practice canonical.

Consonants

Letoa stops and affricates may be voiced or voiceless. Stops may also be aspirated. In addition, there are sonorants and fricatives. The canonical sounds of Letoa consonants are shown in the table below.

	Lab.	Alv.	Pal.	Vel.	Glott.
Nas.	m	n
Stop	b, p, ph	d, t, th		g, k, kh
Affric.			j, c
Fric.		s	x		h
Trill		r
Lat.		l

Most of these phonemes have their IPA values at all times. The exceptions are j, c and x. These are similar to English j, ch and sh but are made further back in the mouth.

The Letoa Academy licenses the following variations:

An unwritten glottal stop /ʔ/ may be sounded between words where two identical vowels meet. Younger speakers though, tend to delete the first vowel instead, much to the annoyance of their seniors.

Speakers of languages that lack voiced stops may replace them with ejectives.

Any other lateral may replace l and any other rhotic may replace r.

H may be replaced by /x/, /ʔ/, or /ɸ/.

Suprasegmental Features

The language is syllable-timed.

Syllables must be (C)V in shape (where V=any vowel and C=any consonant). The stress in Letoa always falls on the penultimate vowel.

Overall Letoa phonemes present few difficulties to speakers of Rotoa languages. This helps ensure that Letoa is well-suited to its role as the global auxiliary language.