Orlekra Pronunciation Guide

Orlekra, or “gobbo” to non-native speakers, is a con-lang closely related to English, from which it derives, along with some German and a smattering of other languages thrown in for fun. Unlike English, the spelling is regular and phonetic. Most English speakers shouldn’t have trouble with any consonants, as they are rendered as an English speaker would expect. But we’ll point out a few things you might find a little foreign.

Consonants

• ‘x’ always represents an unvoiced velar fricative. As in the Scots-English “loch”
• If possible, ‘r’ should be tapped (ɾ) instead of the ɹ or ɰ more common in American English
• ‘y’ is always the voiced palatal consonant as in “you” or “bay”. In gobbo, it’s primarily used to break diphthongs as in “fayeer” (en. fire) but may be a consonant on its own as in “ya” (en. yes) or as part of some consonant clusters “dyost” (en. just)

Vowels

There are only five vowels in gobbo: a, e, o, i, and u. Despite being derived from English, gobbo has dropped most of the vowel sounds, including diphthongs. So don’t worry about “long” or “short” versions.

• ‘a’ as in English ‘cat’ or ‘ash’
• ’e’ as in English ‘bet’ or ‘weather’
• ‘o’ as in English ‘cot’ or ‘bother’
• ‘i’ as in English ’tree’ or ‘sweet’ (often in the scripts we’ll use ’ee’ to make sight reading easier)
• ‘u’ as in English ‘food’ or ‘suit’ (often in the scripts we’ll use ‘oo’ to make sight reading easier)

Important Note

I hear you already. “But, Mr. Scott Paladin, sir, English has a lot of forms and a lot of the vowels you give examples of will be different for different speakers!” That’s totally fine. I won’t be knocking off points if you use a different set of vowel sounds than the ones I do or that others do. Just do your best.

Really don’t sweat the pronunciations too much. If you make a good go of it, I’ll mark you full points. The performance is what will ultimately matter.