Thoya conlang: The phenome and alphabet

A phoneme means the set of sounds a language uses. First, a discussion of our considerations in choosing a phoneme:

A larger phoneme allows the language to be faster, because it increases the possible space of short words.

However, including a lot of sounds that aren't in most native languages would make it hard to learn.

We also want to avoid having sounds that are too similar.

Thus, Thoya uses the 5 vowels found in most human languages with only one addition from English.

Since there are 28 distinct sounds, we can't just use the Latin alphabet. We use unicode IPA symbols for some of them. However since unicode symbols are hard to type on an English keyboard, we use all the Latin letters even the ones that aren't associated with the sounds we give them, to minimize the number of unicode symbols.

Unlisted Latin letters sound exactly the way they do in American English (y and w are always consonants), here are the non-obvious ones:

i: as in k*ee*p

u: as in r*oo*f

e: as in k*e*pt

o: The *o* sound typical of other languages (mid-back rounded vowel).

Mid-back rounded vowel on Wikipedia

a: as in t*o*p. In unstressed positions, this can be weakened to the soundn in c*u*p (they are phonetically very similar, and this weakening seems to happen in many other languages too).

ɪ: as in t*i*p (U+026A). In unstressed positions, can be weakened to any realization of the "schwa" sound, as in English suffixes in "tion".

x: *sh*. I chose this letter to represent it because it's used that way in some Chinese transliteration schemes, so some people will be familiar with it.

j: as in vi*s*ion (NOT *j*oke; that's *dj*)

c: *th*ing. I chose this letter to represent it because it's used that way in the Spain dialect of Spanish. And note this means the name of the language is written *coya* in itself, but I write it as Thoya in English so that people wil get the pronunciation right.

q: *th*e. I'm not aware of any language where this sound is written with this letter; it was just the only Latin letter left.

ŋ: as in si*ng* (U+014B). This sound appears in some situations where it's not allowed to in English like at the beginning of a word.

There are a few digraphs; in theory these are composed of the sounds of their letters, but I'll list them anyway:

e + y = w*ay*

a + y = h*i*

o + y = s*oy*

e + w = (I don't know of this dipthong existing in any language except Latin, but it's pronounced as a normal *e* with a *w* sound after)

t + x = *ch*

d + j = *j*et

Two vowels in a row, like -ui-, is to be pronounced as two syllables.

Also, uppercase letters are never used.

Non-strictness

Since Thoya has no native speakers, there isn't a standard for exactly how it's supposed to sound, and I think that's a good thing. If you come from Spanish and your "e" is the tight one that sounds like "ay" to Englihs speakers, that's correct too, even though mine is the flatter English one! If you come from Japanese and your "u" is unrounded, that's also correct! Most importantly, the "r" can be pronounced as either the English r *or* the tapped r in most languages. Since we only have 1 r sound, it'll be clear either way and that's what matters.

No squishing duplicate sounds

When you have a word that starts with the same sound as the previous word ends with, pronounce them separately (double length). Pronouncing them like a single occurrence of the letter may result in ambiguity.

Voiceless stops stay voiceless

In English, voiceless stops become voiced if they're between a fricative and a vowel. For example, most people don't notice it but *spell* is actually pronounced as *sbell*. Thoya should not be pronounced this way because it limits our phenome space. If a word is supposed to be pronouned *sbell*, it will be written that way.

Accent

A few rules about syllable stress.

Two-syllable words are always stressed on the first.

Non-substantial words (ki, nu, i/o, 1-syllable prepositions) are always unstressed unless semantically emphasized.

These rules reduce ambiguity because in lots of 2-syllable verbs the first syllable is another word.

ASCII transliteration

If Thoya needs to be written in pure ASCII, the suggested transliteration is to simply replace ɪ with 'i, and ŋ with 'n.