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Pronunciation

Ten consonants, five vowels, and a deliberately wide target for each. If your accent differs from mine, we can still understand each other — that is the whole design.

Consonants

Aim for the middle column. Everything in the right-hand column is equally correct — not tolerated, correct.

So if your language does not separate r from l, don't worry: in Pikotika the difference carries no meaning. A Spanish speaker, a Mandarin speaker, and a Japanese speaker saying pona will produce three audibly different words, and all three are saying it right.

Vowels

Vowels are the secondary cue: nearly every word is recognizable from its consonants alone, which is why the vowel targets can be loose.

There are no diphthongs. Two vowels together are two syllables: mekaaku ‘sea’ is me-ka-A-ku, and veniire ‘trip’ is ve-ni-I-re. No single root has two vowels in a row; the pairs appear where roots meet in a compound, and in adapted names like Sutorauto (Strout), where au is two syllables.

Stress

One stress (emphasis) per word, always on the next-to-last syllable. There is nothing to memorize and no exceptions to learn.

Click any of the words above, and then click the little play button, to hear it pronounced correctly. This works for almost any Pikotika word on this site.

A compound is one word for this purpose, however many roots it contains — kasepeste is home-animal ‘cat’, and it takes a single stress, not one per root.

A one-syllable word (for example rus) is stressed on that syllable. The three particles are the exception: ri, a and te are never stressed.

Four stresses in that sentence, not six: YAN-yer, E-ko ri VI-te a KA-nis.

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