Sounds
Tonesu uses a small, globally pronounceable sound inventory. No special training is required — every sound approximates something in a major world language.
One letter = one sound. No silent letters, no digraphs, no exceptions.
Consonants
17 consonants. Excluded by design: th, x, q, c (redundant with k/s), uvulars, retroflexes, ejectives, clicks.
| Symbol | Sounds like | Primitive root |
|---|---|---|
p |
p in spin | pa — place |
b |
b in ban | be — growth |
t |
t in stop | to — thought/pattern |
d |
d in dog | di — direction |
k |
k in skip | ka — action |
g |
g in go | go — cause |
m |
m in man | mu — object |
n |
n in no | ne — relation |
s |
s in sun | su — structure |
z |
z in zoo | zo — living thing |
l |
l in let | li — person |
r |
flap or trill, not retroflex | re — repetition |
f |
f in fan | fe — boundary |
h |
h in hat | ha — heat |
y |
y in yes | — |
w |
w in win | wi — will |
v |
v in vine | vo — value |
Vowels
5 vowels — pure, consistent, no context-dependent shifts.
| Symbol | Sounds like | Primitive root |
|---|---|---|
a |
father | ma — matter |
e |
bed | se — perception |
i |
feet | si — signal |
o |
go | so — sound |
u |
food | mu — object |
Syllable shapes and tiers
Every word's shape tells you what kind of thing it is. There are four structural tiers:
| Shape | Tier | What lives here | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| CV | Primitive root | The 34 foundational roots | to, li, go |
| CV-CV+ | Compound | Open vocabulary assembled from roots | toli (scholar), rakimu (engine) |
| CVC | Lexical atom | Digits, colors, scale prefixes — closed classes | kel, sun |
| CVCC | Exceptional anchor | Mathematical/physical constants only | varn |
Every internal syllable in a compound begins with a consonant. This means you can always segment a compound left-to-right without backtracking. The parser never needs to guess.
Stress
Stress always falls on the first syllable. No exceptions, no marking needed.
KA-ru·LI-na-se·SU-mu-to·TO-li·RA-ki-mu
Writing
Written Tonesu is solid — compounds are written without spaces or hyphens between roots. The word for scholar is toli, not to-li.
The apostrophe ' is the only normative non-alphabetic character in a word. It marks a structural grouping boundary inside a long compound. In speech, the vowel before ' is drawn out — to'tonesu is spoken roughly as too·tonesu. In dictation or formal reading, the spoken word peld is inserted instead. See Notation.
Analytic forms like to-li (hyphenated) appear in guides and parse breakdowns to show structure — but they are metalinguistic notation, not the written word itself.
Scope-modifier prefixes
A bare vowel at the start of a compound adjusts its register or scope without adding lexical content:
| Prefix | Effect | Example |
|---|---|---|
a- |
abstract / universal | ato — knowing-in-general |
i- |
precise / particular | itoli — this specific scholar |
u- |
interior / foundational | uto — tacit knowledge |
o- |
collective | oli — community as a unit |
e- |
emergent / in-process | eki — change in progress |
When roots are shown with hyphens in these pages — like to-li — that is an analytic notation to help you see the structure. Those hyphens are not part of the word.