Lesson 1: Sounds, Spelling, and Legal Shapes

What to notice

The language keeps pronunciation regular. Each sound has one spelling, and each written vowel is its own syllable nucleus. The default syllable template is (C)V(C), which means every legal word is easy to segment once you know the allowed codas.

Stress is fully predictable. In words with two or more syllables, the main stress falls on the penultimate syllable. That lets you read new roots without memorizing separate accent patterns.

Worked examples

ma.na   = person
ko.ma   = home
ma.ku   = knowledge
ti.ma   = message
ta.ku   = go, travel

Reading drill

Try reading the forms above aloud, then test each one against the legal coda rule. None of them ends in an illegal consonant, and none contains a consonant cluster.

Why this matters

Later lessons will ask you to read compounds and inflected verbs quickly. That only works if the sound system is already automatic.