Ainmere

How to pronounce Ainmere

English has 5 vowel letters; Ainmere has 8 vowels (3 back + 4 front + 1 neutral), plus 13 consonants and 6 diphthongs. Most sounds are familiar; a few are not. This page walks through them all, then shows how vowels stack when derivation suffixes attach.

The 8 vowels

Five are "pure" Spanish-style vowels — clean, short, no glide. Three (ae, oe, ue) are digraph front vowels — written with two letters but pronounced as one sound, and counted as one syllable.

Trick for oe and ue

These are the only two sounds that don't exist in English. Both are made by combining a familiar tongue position with rounded lips:

• oe = tongue says "e" (bed), lips say "o" (oh)
• ue = tongue says "ee" (see), lips say "u" (oo)

If you can pronounce German München or French une, you already have both.

Vowel classes & harmony

Every Ainmere vowel belongs to a class: back, front, or neutral.

• Back: a, o, u — these are "grounded" sounds (low or back tongue)
• Front: ae, oe, ue, e — these are "lighter" sounds (high or front tongue, often with rounded lips)
• Neutral: i — works with either class

This is why kala (light) feels grounded and physical while faele (emotion) feels lighter and more abstract — the vowel class colors the whole word.

Diphthongs

Six specific vowel combinations are diphthongs — two vowels glide together into a single syllable. Any other vowel-vowel sequence stays as separate syllables.

Consonants

Twelve single-letter consonants and one digraph (sh). All are familiar from English; three need a note.

Syllable structure & stress

The syllable template is (C)V(N): an optional consonant, then a vowel (single or digraph or diphthong), then optionally a nasal coda (n or m). Examples of allowed shapes:

• V: a, i, ae
• CV: ta, ru, fae, she
• VN: an, um
• CVN: tan, kum, shen

Words always end in a vowel or a nasal — never in p, t, k, f, s, sh, h, l, r, w, y.

Examples (stressed syllable in bold gold):

• ta·ru — "knowledge" — 2 syllables, stress on first
• ta·ru·a — "a knower" — 3 syllables, stress shifts to ru
• ta·ru·a·e — not a real form, but illustrates: stress always counts back from the end
• fae·le — "emotion" — even with the fae digraph, le is the last syllable, so fae is stressed in this 2-syllable word

Derivation suffixes (the important one)

Every root takes five derivation suffixes to shift its grammatical role. The suffix shape depends on the root's vowel class.

Notice that action uses -e and quality uses -i for both classes. This is by design: those two suffixes are "harmony-neutral" and can attach to any root without violating the class rule.

Worked example: taru (back-class, "knowledge")

The root is /ta.ɾu/. Watch how the stress shifts as each suffix attaches:

• taru /ta.ɾu/ — knowledge
• tarua /ta.ɾu.a/ — a knower (entity). The final -a is its own syllable.
• tarue /ta.ɾu.e/ — to know (action). Yes, you mix back u with neutral-ish e here — that's the action-suffix exception.
• tarui /ta.ɾu.i/ — knowledgeable (quality)
• taruo /ta.ɾu.o/ — of knowledge (relation). Used in compounds like taruo-kala.
• taruu /ta.ɾu.u/ — the concept of knowing (abstract). Two u's in a row, each its own syllable: ta·ru·u.

Worked example: faele (front-class, "emotion")

The root is /fae.le/ — 2 syllables (fae is one syllable; the ae digraph counts as one vowel).

• faeleae /fae.le.ae/ — feeler / emotional being (entity). The final -ae is its own syllable.
• faelee /fae.le.e/ — to feel (action). Yes, two e's; each its own syllable.
• faelei /fae.le.i/ — emotional (quality)
• faeleoe /fae.le.ø/ — of emotion (relation). The -oe is one sound (rounded e).
• faeleue /fae.le.y/ — the concept of emotion (abstract). The -ue is one sound (rounded i).

Compounds

Compounds join two roots with a hyphen. The modifier comes first (in its relation form, usually with -o or -oe), the head root comes second:

• miro-taru = self-knowledge (introspection). miru "self" in relation form miro, plus taru "knowledge".
• shanao-taru = star-knowledge (astronomy)
• nako-taru = person-of-knowledge (scholar)

Each half of a compound keeps its own stress — they're two phonological words joined by a hyphen, not one giant word. Pause briefly at the hyphen.

Putting it together — practice phrases

Try reading these aloud. Stressed syllable in bold gold:

• mi·ru·a — a self / a person (entity form of miru)
• se·li — thought
• se·li·e — to think (action)
• mi·ro-se·li — introspection (self-thought compound)
• fae·le·oe — of emotion (front-class relation form). The final oe = rounded e, one sound.