Lesson 0: Pronunciation & Vocabulary Structure
Welcome to your first lesson! Before we dive into the language, let's learn how to pronounce words and understand how the vocabulary is organized.
To navigate the Lesson, please click the tabs below: "About the Course", "Pronunciation Guide", and "Vocabulary Structure".
The Complete Course is divided into three sections: Core, Fluency, and Extension.
The Core Course covers everything you need to get started. After completing it, you will be able to understand most of Oravia with the help of a vocabulary list. The Core Course takes about 5-8h, so technically it could be done over a weekend. However, most learners find a slower pace more enjoyable.
The Fluency Course finishes all the grammar, allowing you to express more nuance. After completing it, you will be able to talk about pretty much anything, and engage with different kinds of media.
The Extension Course finishes all the vocabulary and unlocks more options for creativity, style, and personalization. After completing it, you will be able to create your own voice, play with all the language features, and contribute to Oravia's development.
In total, there are 80 lessons of about 15 minutes each. Most learners will do best with 1 lesson a day. It doesn't sound like much, but learning a completely different language introduces new ways of thinking and communicating that your brain needs to get used to. Experienced language learners sometimes prefer 2-3 lessons a day if they want a faster pace.
Welcome to the course and enjoy exploring!
Sounds
Let's take a look at how you pronounce words.
Consonants
B C D F G H J L M N P R S T V W Y
All pronounced as you would expect in English or IPA, with the details of:
- C pronounced as in kite
- H pronounced as in house
- J pronounced as in jello
- R pronounced as 'tt' in butter (IPA ɾ, also r)
Vowels
A E I O U:
- A as in father
- E as in cedar
- I as in machine
- O as in door
- U as in flu
If you pronounce E and O closed like in Spanish, that's fine too!
Important: Similar-Sounding Pairs
This system is meant to accommodate different pronunciations and similar sounding pairs (l-r, m-n, p-b, t-d, c-g, f-v, w-v).
For example: There is never a situation where you would need to disambiguate between an l and r sound. If there is a word "dala", there is no word "dara". This means that in practice, you can use a similar pronunciation for l and r.
Consonant Endings
Some syllables end in consonant. If you have trouble pronouncing it, you can insert a non-stressed 'i' right after the consonant and there should be no issues or ambiguity.
Example: You can say morta or mor(i)ta.
Stress
My preference is stress on the penultimate syllable, and if the word ends in consonant, on the last syllable.
Examples:
- iLIru
- iliRAN
That's because it creates a sharper distinction between words (notice that if it were iLIru and iLIran, they would sound more similar).
However, if you want to always emphasize the penultimate syllable, it should still work just fine! Let's call it a dialectal difference :)
Two Vowels Together
The preference is pronouncing it as one syllable (as in oRAvia), but could be two.
Examples:
- LIria (preferred)
- liRIa (also acceptable)
How Vocabulary Works
Now, let's talk about how the vocabulary is structured. No need to memorize any of that, it's just to give you an idea of how it works!
Semantic Clusters
Words belong to a semantic cluster. Their group is indicated by the first syllable of the word.
Take a look at some words:
| Oravia | English |
|---|---|
| mihie | horse |
| mibeh | goat |
| mimu | cow |
Wait, so are these pairs of words related somehow? That's right! MI is for large animals. It's their semantic group.
Why Clusters?
I did not choose these groups. Rather, how people generally use these concepts led the words to go together based on similarity.
The semantic clusters help learn and remember the vocabulary, because it's easier to make associations.
And they organize the language. For example, the word 'horse' is more specific than the word 'animal'. However, 'horse' and 'animal' are two different English words that you need to memorize. In Oravia, it's easier: the word 'horse' already has the sound 'animal' in it.
But it's not only that. One of the cool things about the clusters is that even if you only know the 48 groups, you may be able to have a grasp of what's going on.
Example: Understanding Through Clusters
For example, take a look at this sentence (let's focus on vocabulary and not grammar for now):
You have no idea what these words mean. But if you know that:
- mi is used for larger animals
- ti is used for doing bad things to someone
- fa is used for family members
You can see that:
Subclusters
Many clusters are further subdivided into 0-3 subclusters, which are indicated by the third letter.
| Oravia | English |
|---|---|
| miotan | elephant |
| miogar | bear |
| miohou | wolf |
Any ideas what this subcluster is about?
It's also super useful when you are communicating with people and forgot words.
Let's suppose you want to say you went to shop for a bed, but you forgot how to say it. Maybe you just remember an associated word, like another piece of furniture. Maybe you just remember the beginning of the word "bed". Maybe you just remember how to say furniture.
In every one of these cases, you'd know the subcluster for furniture-related words is bon. And if you just say bon, the meaning will be less specific, but you will probably be able to communicate.
Or if you wanted to say you are feeling upset, but you forgot the word. You could say instead tos, and people will know you are talking about emotional suffering. And so on.
There are other little surprises in the vocabulary, but we will not talk about them now. As you learn words, these semantic associations become intuitive.
I hope these little nuggets make exploring vocabulary more interesting!
After checking the Pronunciation Guide and Vocabulary Structure, you are ready to start the course!
Continue to Lesson 1 →