Posted by Irgend Jemand on 8:54 8/3/01
In reply to: (none)
It is said that Verdurian ë is pronounced as a romanic e with a y-sound before it. But there are different y-sounds in English. Is the one in ë pronounced as a consonant, like in "yard", as a vowel like in "cry" or as a vowel like in "certainly"?
I also suppose that different vowels following each other in Verdurian are pronounced as different sounds, not as one sound; is that right? (Sorry, I guess I'm to much used to German there)
As for the sound of Verdurian in general, when I tried reading some Verdurian sentences out loudly a while ago, an acquaintance of mine commented that it sounded like Portuguese; is that how it's supposed to sound or does it mean that I completely butchered it?
I really need to figure out how to make sound recordings. :) It's hard to guess what a German speaking with a Portuguese accent sounds like! But Portuguese is probably about right... the vowels are Portuguese-like, and the sh and zh sounds would definitely mark it as not being Spanish.
The ë basically palatalizes the previous consonant; so for instance në should be pronounced as in French vignette, Spanish gruñéramos, or Russian nyet.
For the middle question: yes, two adjacent vowels have to be pronounced separately.