Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-Dental	Coronal	Dorsal	Laryngeal
Nasal	m		n
Plosive	b			k
Fricative		f	s		?
Approximant			l , r\		h

Orthography	Sound
m	/m/ meet
n	/n/ near
b	/b/ bit
k	/k/ neck
f	/f/ fill
s	/s/ sat
l	/l/ last
r	/r\/ red

Consonants can be long or short. Long consonants are represented in the orthography by doubled letters.

The /h/ sound is not written and its exact pronunciation can change based on nearby sounds, for instance sometimes it is realized as a glottal stop /?/. This is called the “ghost”.

Vowels

	Front	Sequence	Back
Close			u
Near-Close	I	oU , ioU
Close-Mid	Ei	EioU
Open-Mid	E
Open	a	iA	A

Orthography	Sound
e <always part of a digraph>	/i/ meet
u	/u/ boot
i	/I/ bit
o	/oU/ no “oh”
eo	/ioU/ Leo “yo”
a <always part of a digraph>	/Ei/ day “ay”
ao	/EioU/ Laos “ayoh”
e	/E/ men
a	/a/ hat
ia <or “ea” in some words>	/iA/ Mia “ya”
ah <digraph>	/A/ father

The vowel sequences are often found together and represented in the orthography by monographs or digraphs. The examples given aren’t exact, but are given to provide guidance, with some practice the necessary diphthongs and sequences can be produced.