Before you begin: the sounds
You need about ten minutes here, once. After that, everything in this primer is Phi.
The vowels
Phi has five vowels, and each one is always the same sound, in every word, forever:
| Letter | Sound | As in |
|---|---|---|
| a | ah | father |
| e | eh | bed, held pure |
| i | ee | machine |
| o | oh | note, held pure |
| u | oo | flute |
"Held pure" matters. English glides its vowels: note drifts toward "no-oot." Phi never glides. Each vowel is one clean sound, start to finish.
The consonants
Ten consonants: h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, all close to their English sounds, with two refinements you can grow into: t and n touch the teeth, not the ridge behind them, and r is a light tap, as in Spanish pero. Four more sounds are written with two letters each:
| Written | Sound |
|---|---|
| ph | a soft f made with both lips, like blowing out a candle gently |
| th | as in think (never as in this) |
| sh | as in shade |
| wh | an airy w, as in the old-fashioned which (w with breath in it) |
ph is one sound, never a p followed by an h. The same for the other three.
Syllables and the dots
Every Phi syllable is a consonant (or one of the two-letter sounds) plus a vowel, and every syllable ends in its vowel. The language has no closed syllables at all. When vowels sit next to each other, each one is its own syllable. This primer marks breaks with dots when a word first appears: mi · a, lo · pi · a, mi · she · ko. Say every dot-separated piece. mia is two syllables (MI-a), not an English "mya."
Stress
Stress the second-to-last syllable, always: lo · PI · a, mi · SHE · ko, si · LA · wo. One rule, no exceptions, like everything else in this language.
The one instruction
Read aloud, and read slowly. Phi is deliberately unhurried: the pace is not a beginner's allowance, it is how the language is meant to sound in a fluent mouth. If you feel yourself speeding up, that is the signal to begin the sentence again.
Now turn the page. From here on, the language will teach you itself.