Phonology: How Words Are Pronounced

There are 5 vowels and 15 consonants.  English consonants such as 'j', 'f', 'v' and 'z' are sometimes used for loan words.

As with English, these vowels are 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u'.  Colloquially, 'e' and 'i', 'o' and 'u' are most often interchanged.  Formally, 'e' is used only in loan words or proper names.  'o' normally occurs in final syllables, as in tu-on [to learn].

Consonants are classified as follows:
b, p - bilabial
d, t - alveolar
l - alveolar (lateral)
r - alveolar (flap)
g, k - velar
h - voiceless glottal fricative
m - nasal (bilabial)
n - nasal (alveolar)
ng - nasal (velar)
s - voiceless alveolar fricative
w, y - consonantal vocoid

Special Characters:
ts - pronounced as 'ch' as in chinese
ui - pronounced as the vowel 'i'

Similar to Filipino, accents play an important role in distinguishing words with identical spelling.  With open sylllables - syllables that end with a vowel - an accent is a combination of stress and length.  To illustrate,'a:mo [(ah'mo) master, employer], the stress is on the 1st syllable; while am'o: [(ahmoh') monkey], the stress is on the final syllable and 'o' is a long vowel. 

For the purpose of this tutorial, I will use the following notations to denote accents:

1. ` as in payat` [thin] - stress is on the final syllable
2. ' as in laba' [long (in length)] - glottal stop on 'a', implicitly, stress is on the 1st syllable
   
3. ^ as in nubo^ [short (in length)] - stress is on the final syllable, glottal stop on 'o'

Each syllable is pronounced clearly in this language.  For hyphenated words such as ta-as [tall] and bug-at [heavy], the 2nd syllable begins with a glottal stop.