Low Orion has been described as “rasping” or “harsh,” but if it sounds that way when you speak it, you’re probably doing it wrong. Yes, it possesses a lot of aspirants, but they’re spoken softly, not like you’re hacking up a hairball or speaking Klingon.

The greatest challenge for Terrans is the sound signified (in the common romanization) with the letter x. This is a pure aspirant, which will sound somewhere between a cat hissing, a palatal aspirant (kh), and the “sh” sound, depending on how it appears in the word, as well as where the speaker is from. When used as a consonant, it’s not that hard, but it may also be used as a vowel between two consonants. Most standard speakers end up including a slight other vowel in there, for instance saying “mxt” as “məkht.” They’ll know what you mean.

Kolari contains consonant combinations that don’t exist in Standard, so remember on encountering these to say the consonants together rather than inserting a vowel, as your instinct will be. ravd, mext, trimft, are one syllable; if you catch yourself extending them into two, practice. These combinations aren’t difficult for the human mouth, only for the monolingual Standard speaker.

vowels	IPA symbol	Standard equivalent
a	ɐ	a as in father
aa	ɐː	ah extended a bit
ai	aɪ	as in eye
au	aʊ	as in now
e	e	e as in bet
ei	eɪ	ai as in pain
i	i	ee as in lee
o	o	o as in tone
u	u	u as in prune
uu	uː	oo extended a bit
y	y	a “narrower” ee, as in Greek upsilon
x	x	a hiss or rasp

Note that, like in Standard, these vowels will vary a bit depending on where in the word they fall—though not to the same degree as in Standard. The only solution here is to listen to as much spoken Kolari as you can. The Orion soap opera Skir bri’Caj el’esh (A deal for my House) is popular among Kolari learners, as the plot is predictable and the vocabulary and syntax are rarely advanced.

consonants	IPA	Standard example
b	b	as in boy
k or c	k	as in key, cat
ch	t͡ɕ	as in chat but a little softer and further back
d	d	as in dog
f	ɸ	as in film, a bit breathy, with both lips
g	g	as in go
h	h	as in hat
j or zh	ʒ	as in measure, garage
kh or x	x	a soft palatal aspirant or hiss as jalapeno, loch
l	l	as in lamb
m	m	as in mouse
n	n	as in nose
p	p	as in pop
r	ɻ	as in rose
rh	ɻh	a breathy r
s	s	as in sign, but a little hissy
sh	ɕ	a very soft sh as in shed
t	t	as in tell
th	θ	as in thigh
v or bh	v	as in vex, very breathy
y	ʎ	as in yet

Romanization note: Some Orion letters have two transliteration options. These are used more or less interchangeably, based on what the Standard speaker will instinctively be able to pronounce. For instance, mxn reminds the reader that x is a unique sound, whereas x’dori may make them try to pronounce it “eks dori,” so it’s often spelled kh’dori instead. Remember that the sound is the same either way: a palatal hiss.

In this text, we will attempt to consistently use x over kh, j over zh, and v over bh. But other texts using Standard letters sometimes make different choices.

The Orion alphabet has no q, w, or z. Borrow words with these sounds will replace them with ku, u, and j. (See how ganzu, Middle Orion, changes to ganju when spelled in low Orion.)

Emphasis

There is no single rule about where to place the emphasis in Orion words. In most cases, the emphasis is decided not based on the word itself, but on its part of speech and etymology. Therefore there will be pronunciation notes throughout showing where the emphasis falls in each category of words.

The most important thing to know is that the emphasis doesn’t shift when you add prefixes, suffixes, or verb endings. It tends to stay on the core syllable of the word, if you can find it. In two-syllable words with no affixes, the emphasis will be on the first syllable of the word.

Punctuation

Orion punctuation is not dissimilar to Standard punctuation, containing marks whose usage is roughly the same as the Terran apostrophe, comma, and period. Therefore these symbols are used when writing Kolari in Roman letters.

There are, however, a few points it’s important to know. First is that, unlike Vulcan or Klingon, the apostrophe is not used to show a glottal stop. Orion does not use glottal stops. Instead, their “small mark” (xlori) is used as the apostrophe in Standard, to show letters have been omitted. Occasionally it joins affixes even when no letters have been omitted. To the extent possible, the words connected by an apostrophe should be pronounced as one. Sh’dori and j’hordak are two-syllable words with no hesitation between the segments. On’prode is three, again with no pause. Only when this results in something genuinely unpronounceable do Orion speakers insert a tiny vowel, as Standard speakers do in didn’t, could’ve: v’dori contains a tiny schwa, and in tr’flars, the r is pronounced as a vowel.

Second, what is duplicated as a comma in Standard letters, skor velt, has no grammatical meaning or rules. It is included in writing as a breath mark, so readers know to take a brief pause. That means there is no grammatical point which is clarified with commas, and all grammar must make sense without any marks. You will add skorn velt at will to control the pace of reading and add emphasis. In handwriting, the length of the skor will express the length of the pause, which means they can variously be transliterated as a comma, semicolon, colon, em dash, or even ellipses.

The long stop, skor skena, sets off sentences like our period.