Welcome to Gaia! ::

Now, I'm nowhere near close to done, but I figured I might as well post this to get the ball rolling.

I began working on Hijaan about 2/3 years ago during a particularly boring English class. I scrapped my early renditions of the alphabet and sound systems, but the idea stuck and changed over time. That which I have now, I have been most satisfied with. I will keep adding to the base I have, and hopefully this thread, at a regular pace.

Hijaan is a conlang I have been developing for a novel idea I got a couple years ago. I'm still compiling the research for it, and if I had the luxury of a full year to work, I may actually be done the research by this time next year. The language has proven to be fun to put together. The sound base borrows heavily from Middle/East Asian languages, the alphabet is based off Persian/Sindhi, and the grammar is based off a conglomeration of Japanese, Punjabi, Mandarin and Korean. I didn't say it made sense.

If I can find it, I may get a picture of the basic alphabet put up fairly soon. After that, I need to rewrite the secondary chart of sound groupings, but with any luck I'll have that put up soon as well.

Happy Learning!

OMG! I love the script to death! Can I see some samples please! mrgreen mrgreen

Righto. Pronunciation, and another lovely chart for your reading/viewing pleasure.

h - Basically like the English h, as pronunced in hat.
k - Pronunced like car in English, k in Japanese, k in Punjabi, k in Korean....
j - The j in jacket or Panjab.
g - G as in goat or the Japanese ga.
s - sun, sandal, sangeet...
sh - shoe.
ch - chart, chadti.
t - tango, turf, torii.
d - dance, darling, daikon.
n - name, namaskaar, namae.
z - zounds, aozora.
m - mori, manila, Madagascar.
l - laughter, long.
p - Panjab, parcel, pour.
f - full, Farsi.
v - versatile, voluptuous, divaani.

But Jazz! You missed some!
Yes I did. Because these sounds require a little extra work.

Kh, jh, gh, th, dh, ňh, bh, r, and chh are pronunced slightly differently. Kh, jh, gh, th, dh, bh, and chh are pronunced with a small but noticeable puff of air behind the sound. One might think of pronuncing them as a morph of the bolded sounds below:
take him
lodge him (Ignore the English and follow the example)
log him (Again, don't listen to what I say, listen to what I mean)
get him
dread him
bribe him
ditch him
For the last example, think of sneezing very forcefully, with air behind it. (ACH(H)OO!)
Gesundheit. Anyways.
The r sound is produced with a single roll, as found occasionally in Japanese, and never according to English pronunciation.
Finally, the strangest one of all. The ňh sound is quite literally a nasal n. Yes, one could argue that all n sounds are nasal (which is true), but this ňh sound is essentially Nasal². When pronuncing a word with this in it, such as danshijaňh (alphabet):

It looks like this: danshijaňh
But is pronunced like this: danshija...n.

What I mean by that is that the sound almost trails off and the ňh is forced through the nose, but is very quiet. One can hardly hear the last ňh sound of the word. For good examples of this sound, think of the Hindi words churaluu.n and ra.ng, if you are familiar with them.

Thankfully, the vowels are a little less complicated than the consonants.
a - arrive, aloof.
aa - faather, naught.
i - ii desu, me.
e - let, met, debt.
ai - Canada eh, sarang hae, lay
u - boom, samui.
o - tone, phonetically.

Alright, now that you hopefully understand how to pronunce the sounds, here come the conjuncts!

Enjoy! Any more questions about pronunciation and whatnot, PM me. I'll look at my inbox faster than I will this thread.