The vowels have one invariable sound each ; not as in English, where each vowel has several sounds and each sound has many representatives.
- a as in papa, psalm, far, father.
- ä as in care, fair ; prolongation of the sound in cat.
- e as in they, obey.
- i as in machine, be.
- o as in go.
- ö as in word, sir.
- u as in rude, rood.
- ü has nothing like it in English. The lips being protruded as if to say u (oo), try to say i (ee).
Some English words spelt, as nearly as possible, in Volapük letters:
A public functionary, cöc. A fowl, gus. The act of selling, sel. Parts of the hand, pam, nels. Animals, jip, got, käz.
The accent is always on the last syllable, exclusiv, however, of a syllable joined to it with a hyphen. Ex.: getòm ; getòm-li ? getòm-la. -li and -la are the only syllables so hyphenized.
Two vowels coming together are sounded in separate syllables ; as laut (la-ut), geil (gay-eel), sied (see-aid).
In writing and printing Volapük a system of punctuation is employed which differs slightly from ours, as follows:
The quotation-marks are „——“ instead of "——".
The exclamation-point is used after a simple address, as well as after an ejaculation. Where we write
| Dear Sir, | |
| Volapükists would write | Dear Sir ! |
The use of capitals is the same as in English, except that nouns and adjectivs derived from proper nouns do not begin with capitals, nor do any pronouns. In our language we print
| Frenchman, | France, | French." | |
| in Volapük | „flentel, | Flent, | flentik.“ |
In this book, we print Volapük words and sentences in heavier type.
