Intralingua/Phonology

Intralingua aims for a middle pronunciation, easy for all Romance language speakers.

Consonants

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal	Labial- velar	Velar		Glottal
Plosive	p	b			t	d					k	ɡ
Nasal		m				n
Tap						ɾ
Fricative			f	v	s	z	ʃ	(d)ʒ					(h)
Affricates					(ts ~ tʃ)
Approximant									j	w
Lateral approximant						l

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
High-mid	e	o
Low	a

Stress

The general rule is that stress falls on the vowel before the last consonant (e.g., lingua, 'language', esser, 'to be', requirimento, 'requirement'), and where that is not possible, on the first vowel (via, 'way', io crea, 'I create'). There are a few exceptions, and the following rules account for most of them:

• Adjectives and nouns ending in a vowel followed by -le, -ne, or -re are stressed on the third-last syllable (fragile, margine, altere 'other', but illa impone 'she imposes').
• Words ending in -ica/-ico, -ide/-ido and -ula/-ulo, are stressed on the third-last syllable (politica, scientifico, rapide, stupido, capitula, seculo 'century').
• Words ending in -ic are stressed on the second-last syllable (cubic).

Speakers may pronounce all words according to the general rule mentioned above. For example, kilometro is acceptable, although kilometro is more common.

Phonotactics

Interlingua has no explicitly defined phonotactics. However, the prototyping procedure for determining Intralingua words, which strives for internationality, should in general lead naturally to words that are easy for most learners to pronounce. In the process of forming new words, an ending cannot always be added without a modification of some kind in between. A good example is the plural -s, which is always preceded by a vowel to prevent the occurrence of a hard-to-pronounce consonant cluster at the end. If the singular does not end in a vowel, the final -s becomes -es.

Notes