Before You Start
Welcome!
This course was designed to give you a feel of how Oravia works and what it is about. By the end, you will know the basics, which is enough to start communicating!
Before Lesson 1, take a few minutes to hear how Oravia sounds and notice one thing about its vocabulary.
How to use this course
This course is meant to be light. Read the examples and try the little questions before opening the answers. Keep going even if you forget a word as the same words and sound-meaning connections will come back.
You do not need to memorize everything in each lesson before continuing.
Pronunciation
Consonants
B C D F G H J L M N P R S T V W Y
Most can be pronounced as you would expect in English or IPA. A few are worth pointing out:
- C as in cake — /k/
- H as in house — /h/; /ʁ/ or /x/ are also fine
- J as in jello — /dʒ/
- R like the tt in American butter — /ɾ/; /r/ is also fine
- Y as in yes — /j/
Vowels
A E I O U
- A as in father — /ɑ/
- E as in cellar — /ɛ/
- I as in creek — /i/
- O as in door — /ɔ/
- U as in flu — /u/
Closed e and o, as in Spanish, work too.
Consonant endings
Some syllables end in a consonant. If that is uncomfortable, add a short unstressed i after it:
morta → mor(i)ta
Both are fine.
Stress
The preferred stress is on the penultimate syllable:
- iLIru
- MOUje
With a suffix, the word keeps its original stress and the suffix gets an additional emphasis:
- MOUje + UM
- MOUjeUM
Two vowels together
Adjacent vowels are preferably pronounced as one syllable, as in oRAvia, but two syllables are also acceptable:
- LIria — preferred
- liRIa — also acceptable
iliru · mouje · moujeum · liria
The recordings may reflect my own accent. Aim for mutual intelligibility rather than to copy an exact accent. Accents vary and there is no "right" accent.
One thing to notice
Vocabulary usually takes longer than grammar because words need to be seen multiple times. Oravia gives you recurring sound-meaning connections to help you learn and remember words.
Look at these three words:
| Oravia | Meaning |
|---|---|
| mihie | horse |
| mibeh | goat |
| mimu | cow |
Anything jump out?
Reveal
They all begin with MI.
In Oravia, MI is connected with larger animals. So even before you know the exact word, the opening already gives you a clue about its category.
You will start seeing how this works in Lesson 1.
That's enough vocabulary structure for now. There's more going on inside Oravia words, but it's more fun to let you explore the system as we go.