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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 two sections: Core and Expansion. The Course is called complete not because it covers everything there is about Oravia, but because it has grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading, and writing.

The Core Course covers everything you need to get started. After completing it, you will be able to understand a lot of Oravia with the help of the 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 Expansion Course finishes most of the grammar, allowing you to express more nuance. After completing it, you will be able to have conversations and consume media more easily. As with any language, becoming fluent requires more than studying: talking and reading/listening are essential steps. Lucky for us, this tends to be the most fun part! And after Expansion, you will have little problem diving in.

In total, there are 60 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 cake (IPA k)
  • H pronounced as in house (IPA h, ʁ or x)
  • J pronounced as in jello (IPA dʒ)
  • R pronounced as 'tt' in butter (IPA ɾ, r)

Vowels

A E I O U:

  • A as in father (IPA ɑ)
  • E as in cellar (IPA ɛ)
  • I as in creek (IPA i)
  • O as in door (IPA ɔ)
  • U as in flu (IPA u)

Pronouncing E and O closed like in Spanish (IPA e and o) is 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

Preference is stress on the penultimate syllable.

Examples:

  • iLIru
  • MOUje

When we add suffixes, the word retains the original stress and gets an emphasis on the suffix, like this:

  • MOUje + UM
  • MOUjeUM

Two Vowels Together

The preference is pronouncing it as one syllable (as in oRAvia), but could be two.

Examples:

  • LIria (preferred)
  • liRIa (also acceptable)

iliru, mouje, moujeum, liria

The part of language learning that takes the longest is vocabulary. This is true even with Oravia, which has a small vocabulary and ways to make acquiring it easier. Remembering words requires exposure and repetition, and this course takes a light approach: no long writing exercises, no spaced repetition decks. This means that especially in the beginning, before you know the syllable-meaning associations, learning words may not be as easy. But, as your progress through the course, it gets easier and easier! Because of the vocabulary structure, the more words you know, the easier it becomes to learn more. So don't worry if you forget or confuse words, it will come naturally to you as you progres.

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):

Miogar i tiva e faila

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:

Mi     i  ti   e  fa
↓         ↓      ↓
a large   harmed  a family
animal            member

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 →