Elefen pronunciation

Elefen (also known as “lfn” or “Lingua Franca Nova”) is a constructed language, like Esperanto and Toki Pona, with a simple yet powerful grammar. Elefen borrows its vocabulary from Português, Español, Català, Français, and Italiano—so, if you speak any of those you will be familiar with a lot of words from Elefen. If you want to get a taste of how the language sounds, check the Como un servo channel on YouTube which has readings of world news.

Let’s take a look at its pronunciation.

Letters

Every letter is pronounced as follows:

• “a” as in “trash”.
• “b” as in “bow”.
• “c” as the “k” in “Karen”.
• “d” as in “dager”.
• “e” as in “bed”.
• “f” as in “far”.
• “g” as in “get”.
• “h” as in “hard”.
• “i” as the “ee” in “pee”.
• “j” as the “s” in “usually”. It’s not a common “s” sound, it is something between “sh” and “y”¹.
• “l” as in “loud”.
• “m” as in “meet”.
• “n” as in “no”.
• “o” as in “boat”.
• “p” as in “park”.
• “r” as in “red”.
• “s” as in “soft”.
• “t” as in “take”.
• “u” as the “oo” in “boot”.
• “v” as in “vow”.
• “x” as the “sh” in “shake”.
• “z” as in “zoo”.

Elefen is not that strict with pronunciation so if you have trouble saying some words you can “soft” the sounds out. For example, if someone has trouble saying the hard “r” as in “rock” or some spanish words, it’s alright to say a softer “r” as in “iron”.

There are some diphtongs that we should pay atention to:

• “ai” as in “aisle”.
• “oi” as in “coin”.
• “au” as in “mouth”.
• “eu” as in “bay watch”.

Stress

The stress usually lies in the vowel that precedes the last consonant, this holds even for plurals (“s” ending). I will use the “´” character to mark the stress:

• víse - screw, bolt.
• víses - screws, bolts.
• pésa - weight.
• atléta - athlete.

When there is no consonant, the first vowel is stressed:

• véa - old.
• véi - to grow old.
• tíe - aunt, uncle.

There are some special words that work like plurals, so they follow their rules for pronunciation. An example is “ámbos”.

As noted before, Elefen has the following diphthongs: “ai”, “au”, “eu”, “oi”. Adding a prefix does not create a diphthong. This is important because if a word has a diphthong near the end, the “i” and “u” behave like a consonant regarding stress:

• abáia- bark.
• cacáu - cacao.

When a word has multiple vowels after the last consonant and they are either “ae”, “ao”, “ea”, “eo”, “oa”, “oe”, “ui” then the stress goes in the first letter of that pair:

• conéo - rabbit.
• idéa - idea.
• prodúi - to produce, production.

Otherwise just follow the stress on the vowel before the last consonant rule.

Exceptions

The following words can be stressed in either the last vowel or the second to last, your choice:

• ala - there, wing.
• asi - here.
• agu - sharp, spicy.
• ami - friend.
• enemi - enemy.
• perce - why.
• alo - hello.
• ura - hooray.

Again, the language is not too strict with pronunciation, so if you just follow the “stress the vowel before the last consonant” rule then there will be no problem. Also, one can check the stress of a word in the Elefen dictionary.

Notes