SPELLING RULES
The spelling rules commonly accepted by almost all the Aragonese writers were settled in the "I Congreso ta la Normalizazión de l'Aragonés", held in Uesca in 1987. Before this date, Aragonese was written without any fixed norms or following Castillian rules.
The present alphabet aims to be as phonetic as
possible and tries to achieve two main objectives: on one hand, the elimination
of letters that do not represent any different sounds (e.g: "v" = /b/,
like "b", or "h" = /ø/*); on the other, to avoid a sound being represented
by different letters (e.g: the voiceless sound of English "th" represented
only by "z").
[* there are only four diacritic "h" in the Simple
Present tense of the verb "aber" (to have)]
Below the letters are shown, followed by the phoneme or phonemes they stand for and their name in Aragonese. (In the written work, we used the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as stated by Professor A. C. Gimson in the 14th edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary; as the font "Times" is the only permitted when editing these web pages, we have been forced to do some modifications in some places).
VOWELS:
CONSONANTS:
Some observations must be pointed out:
-There is no relevant difference in length in Aragonese vowels and all of them can be said to coincide with cardinal vowels, but for /a/ that varies in some extent between cardinal vowels number 4 and 5, being close to a more open and long variety of the R. P. vowel in "pub".
-Aragonese fortis plosives are to be pronounced without aspiration (as they are in English when following an "s").
-"ñ" and "ll" stand for palatalized versions of /n/ and /l/ and their pronounciation is somehow like /nj/ and /lj/.
-"r" can stand for:
1) an alveolar tap (more or less like in English,
but without lip-rounding) when it is in intervocalic position, following
a consonant and preceeding a vowel, or at the end of the word.
2) an alveolar roll (the same as "rr") when it
is in initial position.
3) /ø/, that is, not pronounced at all,
in plural endings "-rs" (e.g: "corders" = /kor'des/). When the final "r"
of an infinitive is followed by a pronoun, it is also dropped, being both
words joined by a hyphen (e.g: "leyer" > "leyer-lo" /le'jelo/ [to read;
read it]).
-"s" can stand for /s/ or /z/; there is no phonemic relevance in it, being voiced after a voiced sound and voiceless after a voiceless sound.
-/l/ must never be "dark" in Aragonese.
