IA Classica Phonology

 The vowels and consonants of Interlingua Classica:

Vowels

Monophthongs

No.	Orthography	IPA	Note
1	a	/a/	Like a in English diphthong ou (about)
2	i y (Greek loanword)	/i/	Like English short ee
3	u	/u/	Like English short oo
4	e	/e/	Like English short eh
5	o	/o/	Like English short oh

[ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔ] can optionally be used as allophones for [i, u, e, o] especially before nasals in closed syllables.

Diphthongs

No.	Orthography	IPA	Note
1	æ	/e/	Not actually a diphthong
2	au	/aw/	Greek loanwords
3	ei	/ej/
4	eu	/ew/	Greek loanwords
5	oe	/e/	Not actually a diphthong

y is semivowel /j/ = ya, yu, ye, yo 

u in qu- and gu- is semivowel /w/ = ua, ui, ue, uo, uæ

w is semivowel /w/ ouside of qu- form

u is always pronounced and never silent.

Vowels i- and u- as in ia, iu, etc. and ua, uu, etc. are two syllabic and never as diphthongs.

Vowel -i and -u as in -ei, ui, oi and au, eu, ou are dipthongs.

Consonants

No.	Orthography	IPA	Note
1	b	/b/
2	c (hard) k q	/k/	K is for loanwords before i and e Q is before u
3	c (soft)	/tʃ/	Like English soft ch and Italian soft c
4	d	/d̪/	Ideally and formally, dental d like in Romance languages
5	f ph	/f/
6	g (hard) gh	/g/	Gh is for loanwords before i and e
7	g (soft)	/d͡ʒ/	Like in English
8	h	/h/
9	j	/ʒ/	Like English zh and French j
10	l	/l/
11	m	/m/
12	n	/n/
13	n (before g, c, k, q)	/ŋ/	Like in English (sing)
14	p	/p/
15	r rh	/r/
16	s	/s/
17	s (intervocalic and before voiced consonants)	/z/	Even initial s before voiced consonants, like in Italian
18	ss	/ss/	Like in Italian
19	t th	/t̪/	Ideally and formally, dental t like in Romance languages.
20	v	/v/
21	x	/ks/ /gz/ (intervocally)
22	y	/j/	Used initially to lessen the ambiguity between capital i and lowercase l.
23	z	/z/
24	sc (hard) sk	/sk/	Sk is for loanwords before e and i.
25	sc (soft)	/stʃ/	Like English s + soft ch (cheese)
26	ch	/x/	Like in Greek
27	sh	/ʃ/

Greeks loanwords with initial pn, ps, tm, etc. are pronounced as is.

Unnoted consonants are pronounced like in English.

Cia is pronounced as one syllable /tʃja/

Miscellaneous

1. The general spelling is classical and etymological. While the vocabulary is in agreement with common Romance languages, this principle is still applied accordingly.

2. The pronunciation is precise and logical, based on the spelling (except for æ, oe, vocalic y, and th).

For example:

Cuius = cu-yus, not cui-yus

3. For the stress, because the language is syllable timed, the stressed length is generally only lengthened a bit (almost around 50%) and with higher pitch (melodic like in Italian). The stress will be marked with an acute accent (á) in dictionaries. The stress will generally follow Classical Latin or Medieval Latin. 

Some easy rules:

1. The stress will be penultimate for two syllabic words.

2. The stress will be antepenultimate for three syllabic words or more.

3. Compound words may follow the stress pattern of the last component (ex: inter- + língua).

Examples

1. Ágno = /'agno/

2. Sciéntia = /stʃi'entia/

3. Montánia = /mon'tania/

4. Póco = /'poko/

5. Úno = /'uno/

6. Líbro = /'libro/

7. Interlíngua Clássica = /int̪er'liŋgwa 'klassika/