With all that said, now we will outline the sounds we use in Tone in more detail so you know what to expect and how to write the words on a typical keyboard in ASCII. This is the "phonology". Then we will go into some of the standard concepts in the form of words. Finally, we will show some fundamental sentence structures.
First, we need to know how to actually write the words in Tune, and what sounds we can even use to make words in the first place! That is the writing system and "phonology" (sound study).
All sounds and pronunciations are written in simple ASCII using Read Text, but the Read Text letters are introduced next to IPA letters, in case you are already familiar with IPA. Read Text is a system we have devised for writing the pronunciation of words using only letters you have on your traditional laptop keyboard. We use only a small subset of the aspectes of Read Text in Tune, because Tune is designed as a language to only use the "fundamental" sounds, and it turns out to map nicely to the lettering system of Read Text. Take a look at that Read Text link, it describes in much more detail what call script is all about and how it works, if you are interested. However, we will give you just the pieces of it you need to know about right here as well.
Here, we will write the consonants and vowels we use in Tune, which is using Read Text, and will write a word next to each letter to show the key sound that the letter represents. After reading through these, you should know how to write a pronunciation using your keyboard. That is, you can write a word in Tune, which inherently includes how to pronounce it! Then you can use the ToneEtch font to render it using Tone Text, if desired.
In Tune, there are 22 consonants used. They are:
| tone | read | ipa | the way it sounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| m | m | m | "mark" |
| n | n | n | "note" |
| q | q | ŋ | "sing", the -ng sound |
| g | g | ɡ | "gift" |
| d | d | d | "deed" |
| b | b | b | "band" |
| p | p | p | "play" |
| t | t | t | "time" |
| k | k | k | "king" |
| h | h | h | "heal" |
| s | s | s | "soul" |
| f | f | f | "fire" |
| v | v | v | "vibe" |
| z | z | z | "zone" |
| j | j | ʒ | "measure", the "s" sound here, "zh" |
| x | x | ʃ | "ship", the "sh" sound |
| c | c | θ | "thor", the voiceless "th" sound |
| C | C | ð | "this", the voiced "th" sound |
| w | w | w | "wave" |
| l | l | l | "love" |
| r | r | r | "rise" but with spanish, arabic, or indian accent |
| y | y | j | "yard" |
The consonants that are missing (i.e. that Tune does not use) are things like the Hebrew/Arabic harsh "h" sound, the ejective (hard) consonants like in Georgian, the stop consonants like in Korean, the French guttural "r", or the click sounds like in some African languages.
Tune also doesn't have the idea of modified sounds (such as with aspiration, glottalization, or palatalization), or "long consonants".
Then we have the vowels. There are 5 vowels used in Tune. They are:
| tone | read | ipa | the way it sounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| i | i | i | "seat" |
| e | e | e | "make" |
| a | a | a | "call" |
| o | o | o | "hold" |
| u | u | u | "tool" |
We have left out as many as 10 or more vowel sounds used by various other languages, focusing only on these extremely distinct vowel sounds. You can find those left out sounds by looking at Tone.
In the end, we have 22 consonants and 5 vowels, for a total of 27 sounds. This is the same number of letters as the Hebrew alphabet. Here is the alphabetical order. 27 is the number of blocks in a 3D cube. So the first layer in from is the lowest number, and the back layer in back is the highest number, starting from top left and moving right then down.
i e a - d b p - z j x
o u m - t k h - c C w
n q g - s f v - l r y| tone | read | value |
|---|---|---|
| i | i | 1 |
| e | e | 2 |
| a | a | 3 |
| o | o | 4 |
| u | u | 5 |
| m | m | 6 |
| n | n | 7 |
| q | q | 8 |
| g | g | 9 |
| d | d | 10 |
| b | b | 20 |
| p | p | 30 |
| t | t | 40 |
| k | k | 50 |
| h | h | 60 |
| s | s | 70 |
| f | f | 80 |
| v | v | 90 |
| z | z | 100 |
| j | j | 200 |
| x | x | 300 |
| c | c | 400 |
| C | C | 500 |
| w | w | 600 |
| l | l | 700 |
| r | r | 800 |
| y | y | 900 |
This is similar to the Hebrew gematria system where the highest number is 900 as well, and it increments similarly.
Because of the cube, we can play a game of words or animals or sounds.
The final alphabet is:
This is so it flows nicely into the positions of the cube! There are 27 sounds, and 27 slots in a cube.