1. Phonetics

p as in public, people, page
b as in book, bale, bowl
t as in tank, talk, took
d as in dig, dug, dog
c as in kill, club, cook
g as in gill, grammar, green
ph (f) as in fill, photo, fail
th as in think, think, thought
ch as in loch, German ich, mich
h as in hill, hole, hall
hw as in white, whale
v as in veil, vale, view
dh as in the, this, that
m as in mat, mill, more
n as in not, nose, note
ng as in long, fang, thing
l as in left, live, love
r as in right, ray, rove
s as in sight, sign, sigh
y as in yes, yet, your
w as in we, wind, won
gh as in Black Speech agh, ghash (The voiced equiv. of ch.)

Short Vowels

a as in father but shorter
e as in there
i as in green but shorter
o as in not, hot, lot
u as in food but shorter

Long Vowels

â as in father
ê as in let, met, fed
î as in machine, lean, green
ô as in note, smote, wrote
û as in moon, loon, food
ý as in German ü

ai as in aye, aisle, file
ei as in grey, may, day
ui as in ruin,
au (aw) as mouse, house, German haus,
ae
oe

The definite article is a, "the," the plural of which is an. There is no indefinite article.

Nouns have three numbers, singular, dual, and plural. Most plurals are formed with vowel mutations called umlauts, much as in English "man", "men"; "woman", "women."

An a in the final syllable (including monosyllabic words) turns into ai in the plural.

An e in the final syllable (including monosyllabics) turns into i in the plural form. This applies to long ê as well. (ê/î)

The vowel i does not change.
The vowel o becomes ý in the final syllable, as does long ô.
Short u becomes ý in all positions in umlaut.
Long û in the final syllable becomes ui.
The vowel ý does not change.
The diphthong au becomes ui in the final syllable.
No other diphthongs umlaut.

If the noun an adjective describes is plural, the adjective must also umlaut to agree with the number of the noun.

There also exists a "Class Plural," that which describes all things of the same name, such as seringýn, "(all of) the stars," or gýron, "men (as a race.)"

There are three class plural endings,
-gýn , the general ending,
-on, the ending used for races and peoples, and
-tal, used as the ending for enemies and evil peoples.

The initial consonants of words often undergo certain changes, which are termed mutations.

There are 2 types of consonant mutation, lenition and nasal mutation.

3.3.1 Lenition

The most frequent mutation, lenition is the mutation by which hard, unvoiced sounds become softened, voiced sounds, which become the softer spirants.

Lenition occurs to smooth the flow of words in a sentence.

p becomes b
t becomes d
c becomes g
b becomes v (original a voiced bilabial fricative)
d becomes dh
g becomes gh
h becomes ch
s becomes h
m becomes v
hw becomes chw

Lenition occurs after particles, prepositions, and prefixes which end in vowels, as in a heren, "The Star," and in adjectives following the described noun if that noun ends in a vowel, such as an laný ghlirai, "The bright eyes," (Note that the word an "the" is the plural form of a, that the word lanû "eye" is umlauted, and that the adjective glira "bright" is not only lenited, but umlauted to match the number of the noun,) in second words of compounds, such as a herendalus velon "the yellow star-jewel." Also, nouns are lenited in the accusative case.