Much like the consonants of Celinese, its vowels vary widely from dialect to dialect. The list below gives the pronunciation of Standard Elithoan Celinese, whose vowel inventory was most influenced by that of Perís Celinese, which is more widely understood than that of the capital, Ioðinbêr, because of the latter's robust system of vowel reduction.
a, à - both are pronounced like the short [a] in Spanish gato, e.g. saro (colour) – [ˈsaɾɔ]
e, è - these are both similar to [ɛ] as in end, e.g. celínec (Celinese) – [ˈkɛlinɛk]
é, ê - both pronounced as the [e] of French été: sêlm (six) – [selm], témoc (blood) – [ˈtemɔk]
i - traditionally pronounced as [ø], of French peu and German schön. This is lowered by many speakers to [œ] in closed syllables: indo (eye) – [ˈøndɔ] or [ˈœndɔ]
(Vocalic) ı, ë - pronounced as [ə], as in Fr. le or English the: alsë (money) – [ˈalsə]
í - pronounced as [i], like see but shorter: ír (ice) – [iʐ]
o, ò - pronounced [ɔ], like French mort or a shortened RP English core: olos (gold) – [ˈɔlɔs]
ô - pronounced [o], like French eau: ôn (if) – [on]
u, ú - both pronounced as [u], such as the French où: búluhúlu (clutter) – [ˌbuluˈɦulu]
y - pronounced as the [ɪ] in it: ynos (island) – [ˈɪnɔs]
Diacritics
Celinese makes use of four diacritics - the diaeresis on the schwa, ë, and three others, the acute, circumflex and grave, each of which serve a specific purpose, either to mark vowel quality, length, or both.
Except in the case of ú, an acuted vowel usually signals that it is pronounced differently than its unaccented variant. It also is a sign that that given vowel (including ú) should be stressed - though, in the case of í, note the number of regular exceptions to this on the page relating to Stress.
Circumflex vowels are pronounced the same as their acute equivalents. The main difference is that where the acute marks out a stressed vowel too, the circumflex does not. Thus, in cêdrefír (partner) [ˌkedrɛˈviʐ], the first e does not receive primary stress, whilst an initial acuted é would One note to bear in mind is that, in words ending in a vowel followed by ê, the stress moves to the first syllable and the ê is not pronounced as e, but as [jɛ] - so celnoê and tamoê, discussion and bite, are pronounced [ˈkelnɔˌjɛ] and [ˈtamɔˌjɛ] respectively.
Grave vowels are pronounced exactly the same as vowels without a diacritic. Why then do they exist? They are there to stress a vowel without altering its quality like an acute would. Compare ané [aˈne] (thee) with sefodèsg (Swedish) - [sɛvɔˈdɛsç]. Both move the stress to the final e, but only é changes the vowel quality.
There is some ambiguity concerning the representation in text of [o] and [i] - the former is always written ô despite appearing in the stressed syllable of many words, such as Lômborin [ˈlombɔrøn], and í appearing in a number of unstressed syllables, as in dosnín [ˈdɔsnin]. Some proponents of language reform suggest that ó and ŷ/î should be introduced into the language to clearly show when o and i are stressed and unstressed, but few Elithoans are predisposed to major spelling reforms.