Vowel Transcription

Rainian Phonetica represents English vowel sounds using word letters, individual letters, and special letters.

Word-Letter Vowels

Word letters represent the common pronunciations of letters when they are used within a word.

Letter	Pronunciation	Example
a	the vowel in apple	apple
e	the vowel in bed	bed
i	the vowel in sit	sit
o	the aw vowel	saw, father, thought
u	the vowel in cup	cup

The word-letter o represents the aw sound, regardless of whether English spelling uses a, o, or aw to represent it.

Individual Letters

An individual letter is formed by placing a macron over a word letter. The macron indicates that the letter is pronounced as the name of the individual letter.

Letter	Pronunciation	Example
ā	the name of A	safe
ē	the name of E	these
ī	the name of I	time
ō	the name of O	go

For example:

safe → sāf

The ā represents the pronunciation of the name of the letter A.

Special Vowels

Special vowel letters represent vowel sounds that cannot be adequately represented by the ordinary word letters.

Letter	Pronunciation	Example
ė	schwa	about
u̇	the vowel in put	put
ụ	the vowel in soup	soup

Examples

Some examples combining these vowel characters include:

English	Rainian Phonetica
safe	sāf
put	pu̇t
giant	jī'ėnt