Alphabet and pronunciation
Senatola is written in Latin letters, without accents, umlauts or special characters. There are 20 letters, and each one stands for exactly one sound.
The order has a purpose: first the five vowels, then the initial letters of the digits 0 to 9 (nomu, pavu, dosu …), then b (the start of all place-value words such as beku = ten), then the rest. The letters c, q, w, x, y and z are not used.
Sounds
The vowels are pure, as in Spanish or Italian: no glide at the end, so e is never “ay” and o is never “oh-oo”.
| Letter | Sound | Note | as in |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | [a] | any length (true for all vowels) | father |
| e | [e] or [ɛ] | closed or open, both correct | bed, café |
| i | [i] | machine | |
| o | [o] or [ɔ] | closed or open, both correct | more, lot (British) |
| u | [u] | rule | |
| n | [n] | nose | |
| p | [p] | post | |
| d | [d] | day | |
| k | [k] | kite | |
| f | [f] | fish | |
| l | [l] | light | |
| s | [s] | always voiceless, never like the s in “rose” | sun |
| r | [r] or [ʁ] | rolled or throaty r, both correct; a tapped r as in Spanish “pero” is fine too | – |
| g | [ɡ] | always hard, never like the g in “gem” | go |
| j | [j] | always like English y, never like the j in “jam” | yes |
| b | [b] | ball | |
| h | [h] | always heard, never silent | house |
| m | [m] | moon | |
| t | [t] | top | |
| v | [v] | very |
Deliberately left out are sh, ch, z (ts), ü, ö, rough throat sounds and tones.
Syllables
Every syllable consists of exactly one consonant and one vowel. There are never two consonants or two vowels in a row; every word begins with a consonant and ends in a vowel. That is what gives the language its soft sound: se-na-to-la, na-ma-li-ma.
15 consonants and 5 vowels give exactly 75 syllables. Words of one syllable are always short words (such as mi = I or su = and); all other words have at least two syllables.
The syllable chart
All 75 syllables. The coloured syllables are short words; hover over or tap one to see its meaning and hear it.
Stress
The stress always falls on the second-to-last syllable, without exception:
| Word | Stress | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| nama | na-ma | food |
| namara | na-ma-ra | eater |
| namalima | na-ma-li-ma | cucumber |
| Senatola | se-na-to-la | Senatola |
Capital letters
Only proper names are capitalised; even the start of a sentence stays lower case. A capital letter therefore always says: this is a name. Senatola itself is a name and is capitalised.
Punctuation
The grammar is unambiguous even without punctuation, because speech has only pauses. Punctuation is a reading aid:
| Mark | When |
|---|---|
| . | at the end of every statement |
| ? | at the end of every question |
| ! | at the end of every request (starts with vo) |
| „ “ | around every quoted sentence after re |
| , | between clauses and between the items of a list |
In numbers written as digits, thousands are separated by spaces (1 300 000), because the full stop ends a sentence.