II. PHONOLOGY & ORTHOGRAPHY

The phonology of Lin is not a true representation of Lynu sounds, but a human rendition of the audiovisual messages as transcribed by Skhalumbi et al. :-). There are totally 70 Lin letters. They are:

26 X 2 Roman letters as used in Engish, with case distinguished.
10 numerals (0--9)
8 signs (+ = \ | : * ^ %)

A empty space in certain positions has a vocalic value, including which, the number of Lin letters will in fact be 71. The pronunciation of the lower-case consonants as found in Roman alphabet is more or less as in Engish, except:

c: which is the voiceless equivalent of Engish {j}, namely a
voiceless palatal affricate, ELSE a palatal stop as found
in (Asian) Indian languages.
q: velar nasal (like "n" in "king")
v: the voiced continuant found in (Asian) Indian languages.
x: like sh in ship
y: which is a vowel
w: the semi-vowel "w" found in "how"

To American speakers: t is unaspirated as in paste, and not as that in take. The upper case consonants, except vowels, are pronounced as given below.

B, C, D, G, J, K, P, T are aspirated versions of b, c, d, g, j, k, p, t.
{F} is pronounced like English, French {v}. ie., the voiced equivalent of Engish, French {f}.
{H} is the unvoiced version of {h}
{L} is the retroflex equivalent of {l}
{M} labiodental nasal
{N} retroflex nasal
{Q} palatal nasal (like "n" in "bunch")
{R} is a short vowel as in Sanskrit "rk".
{S} voiceless palatal fricative like "ch" in South German "ich"
{V} pronounced like /hv/: i.e, a pre-aspirated {v}
{W} pronounced like /hw/: i.e, a pre-aspirated {w}
{X} pronounced /j/ i.e, like Engish "y" in "yell" (ugh!!)
{Z} pronounced "zh"- get it? :-)

The list of vowels is given according to length and nasalization:

Vowel	short+nasal	long	long+nasal
a	3	A	=
e	4	E	\
i	5	I	\|
o	6	O	:
u	7	U	*
1	8		^
2	9	+	%

Here:

1 is pronounced like "a" in "hat" but is short.
2 is pronounced like French u, or Scandinavian, Finnish y.
Nota: the long equivalent of 1 is a space !!

The letter {0} is a vowel pronounced like "er" in "her" OR like "eu" in French "FEU". It is possible to introduce a schwa-sound (or Russian "y") between any two consonants within a word.

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