Appendix:Chakobsa pronunciation

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Chakobsa's phoneme inventory somewhat resembles that of Arabic since the latter was Frank Herbert's main inspiration for the Chakobsa words he created. However, unlike Arabic, Chakobsa does not have pharyngeal consonants.

Standard Romanization

Letter	IPA	Approximation	Notes
a	a	father
aa	aː	like a, but longer
ai	ai	sky
au	au	now
b	b	bother	Has the allophone [p] (spike) before voiceless consonants.
ch	tʃ	each	Never aspirated, spelled cch when geminated.
d	d	dog
dh	ð	this	Spelled ddh when geminated.
d'h	dh	had had
e	ɛ	bet
f	f	fog
g	g	good
h	h	ham
i	i	beet
ii	iː	like i, but longer
j	dʒ	judge
k	k	sky	Never aspirated.
l	l	left
m	m	man
n	n	no
o	o	moat
q	q	—	Like k, but pronounced further back in the throat, with the back of the tongue contacting the uvula.
r	ɾ	battle	Realized [r] (Spanish perro) when geminated.
s	s	see
sh	ʃ	sheep	Spelled ssh when geminated.
s'h	sh	this had
t	t	stop	Never aspirated.
th	θ	think	Spelled tth when geminated.
t'h	th	it had
u	u	crouton
uu	uː	like u, but longer
v	v	voice
w	w	wave
y	j	yak
z	z	zoo
'	ʔ	like the catch in one's throat that occurs in between the "uh" and "oh" in English "uh-oh"	Unwritten word-initially.

Phonetics

The IPA pronunciation symbol is indicated in slashes when different from the standard romanization.

Consonants

Chakobsa has 23 consonants.

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m		n
Stop/Affricate	b		t, d	ch /tʃ/, j /dʒ/	k, g	q	' /ʔ/
Fricative	f, v	th /θ/, dh /ð/	s, z	sh /ʃ/			h
Approximant	w		l	y /j/
Tap			r /ɾ/

Vowels

Chakobsa has 5 vowels, its 2 mid vowels are always short but the 3 others can be short or long.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i, ii /iː/		u, uu /uː/
Mid	e /ɛ/		o
Open		a, aa /aː/

There are 2 diphthongs, ai and au.

Stress

Stress generally falls on the antepenultimate syllable, unless other syllables are heavier, in which case stress usually falls on the first heavy syllable from the right. However, the final consonant of a word is extrametrical, it does not make the final syllable heavy.