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Orthography & Phonology of Arcadia

Arcadia maintains a one-to-one correspondence between its written and spoken forms, ensuring clarity while allowing flexibility in accent variations. The language uses 23 Latin letters, excluding ⟨k⟩, ⟨q⟩, and ⟨w⟩, along with digraphs and well-defined stress rules to maintain uniformity. There are no silent letters or capitalization in Arcadia.

A complete table of pronunciation for each letter and digraph can be found here.

The /ks/ sound is always written always as ⟨x⟩ and never as ⟨cs⟩.

Pronunciation Flexibility

Arcadia allows a broad range of phonetic variations while maintaining core sounds. For example, ⟨r⟩ is pronounced as /r/, but distinctions like trilled vs. tapped carry no functional load. The phonological system is designed for cross-cultural accessibility, ensuring natural variation.

Arcadia's punctuation system, along with the meanings of each mark, is detailed in the Punctuation section.

Accentuation

Monosyllabic words are always stressed on their sole syllable, eliminating the need for accent marks. For multisyllabic words, stress can fall on the ultimate, penultimate, or antepenultimate syllable.

To minimize accents, only words not stressed on the penultimate syllable require marking.

  • No accent mark → Stress defaults to the penultimate syllable (ho.mis → /'homis/).
  • Acute accent (´) → Marks a non-penultimate stress (a.sé → /a'se/).

Vowel Merging

Adjacent identical vowels merge (mee → mē), but in casual text, merged vowels are typically written in their simplified form (me). A macron (¯) is used only in dictionaries or grammatical references to indicate vowel merging.

Punctuation

If a quoted sentence ends with the same punctuation mark as the main sentence, the punctuation is placed outside the quotation:

  • ✅ He said, "This is correct".
  • ❌ He said, "This is correct.".

Loanwords & Names

Proper names that retain standard Latin spelling remain unchanged (tokyo), even if they contain ⟨k⟩, ⟨q⟩, or ⟨w⟩. Also, standard units of measurement and symbols are used without modification, even if they contain capital letters, eg kWh.

To aid pronunciation, double colons (::) may be used upon the first occurrence of such a name (mike ::maic::).