Mirad/Orthography and Pronunciation

Alphabet

 * The Mirad alphabet has both lower-case and upper-case letters. The alphabet has the same base letters as Latin or English, except that the letters Qq, Xx, and Yy are considered non-native and are used only in foreign names and borrowings.  Also, the letters Hh and  Ww are additional to Agapoff's original Unilingua alphabet and are unique in that they have no inherent semantic values; they are used for various grammatical-only purposes.  A unique feature of Mirad is that every native letter is a semantically- or functionally-significant atom in the language and can be thought of as a brick in word-building.  See Word-building


 * The order of the native alphabet is as follows:


 * a &aacute; &agrave; &acirc; b c d e &eacute; &egrave; &ecirc; f g h i &iacute; &igrave; &icirc; j k l m n o &oacute; &ograve; &ocirc; p r s t u &uacute; &ugrave; &ucirc; v w z


 * The above lower-case letters can also be represented as upper-case letters. In Unicode representations and indexing, the uppercase graphemes precede the lowercase values. Uppercase letters are used much as in American English, that is, for the first letter in sentences, proper nouns, etc.  See  for more details. As mentioned above, the Mirad graphemes Ww and Hh are additional to the letters in the original Unilingua and are used to form the passive voice of verbs and the correlative deictics, respectively.  Foreign names and borrowings sometimes also incorporate Hh, Qq, Xx, and Yy.

Consonants

 * The following letters are classified as consonants:


 * b c  d  f  g  h  j  k  l  m  n  p  r  s  t  v  w  z

Vowels

 * Vowels, or more accurately, vowel nuclei consist of plain vowels and iotated vowels, that is, vowels that have a y-glide sound (iota) before, after, or around them. A synonym of iotated is palatalized.


 * The plain vowels are (only miniscules listed here):
 * a e  i  o  u


 * The iotated vowel nuclei are:
 * &aacute; &eacute; &iacute; &oacute; &uacute;  (pre-iotated)
 * &agrave; &egrave; &igrave; &ograve; &ugrave;  (post-iotated)
 * &acirc; &ecirc; &icirc; &ocirc; &ucirc;  (circum-iotated)

Punctuation

 * Despite Agapoff's idiosyncratic system of punctuation, the punctuation symbols and usage in Mirad are just like those of American English.

Capitalization

 * Capitalization in Mirad follows the same rules as in English. European learners need to be especially careful to capitalize the first letter of the names of languages, nationalities, and inhabitants, which in most European languages are left in lowercase.


 * Note the following examples. The words are all capitalized because the root word is the name of the country China:

Consonant sounds

 * This chart shows the closest phonetic approximations of the Mirad consonant graphemes in English and some other familiar languages, along with the exact value in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet):

Simple vowel sounds

 * a as in Spanish l a  (IPA:/a/)
 * e as in French th é  (IPA:/e/)
 * i as in Spanish s í ! (IPA:/i/)
 * o as in Spanish n o  (IPA:/o/)
 * u as in Spanish t ú  (IPA:/u/)

Pre-iotated vowel sounds

 * These vowels are pronounced the same as the simple vowel above, but with a y-glide at the beginning.


 * &aacute; is like ya as in English  ya cht
 * &eacute; is like ye as in German  je der or English yes
 * &iacute; is like yi as in French  yi ppie or English  ye  (without the final y-glide)
 * &oacute; is like yo as in German  Jo ga or English  yo- yo (without the final w-glide)
 * &uacute; is like yu as in German  Ju li or English  u nit

Post-iotated vowel sounds

 * These vowels are pronounced like the simple vowels, but with a y-glide at the end.


 * &agrave; is like ay as in English Th ai 
 * &egrave; is like ey as in English f ey 
 * &igrave; is like iy as in English s ee 
 * &ograve; is like oy as in English b oy 
 * &ugrave; is like uy as in English f ooey 

Circum-iotated vowel sounds

 * These vowels are pronounced with a y-glide at both the beginning and end.


 * &acirc; is like yay as in English  yi kes!
 * &ecirc; is like yey as in English  yea! 
 * &icirc; is like yiy
 * &ocirc; is like yoy
 * &ucirc; is like yuy

Syllabification and Stress

 * A closed syllable is one that ends in a consonant or a y-glide (i.e., a post- or circum-yodified vowel). A syllable consists of [C]V[C], where V, the vowel nucleus, can begin or end with a y-glide, but contain only one of the set of vowels [aeiou], and where C consists of one or two homorganic consonants, i.e. [bcdfgjknpstvz]+[lrwy].


 * The rule for stress is: If a word ends in a closed syllable, then the last syllable receives the stress, otherwise, the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable receives the stress.


 * Every vowel in Mirad is given its full syllabic pronunciation, even when juxtaposed in what English or European speakers might consider dipthongs: