Language/Papiamento/Pronunciation/Alphabet-and-Pronunciation

As Papiamento comes from Portuguese and Spanish, it contain many characteristics of those 2 languages.

Vowels

Letter	Sampa	IPA	Equivalence
A a	[ a ]	[ a ]	as a in "apple"
E e	[ e ]	[ e ]	as e in "end"
I i	[ i ]	[ i ]	as ee in "teeth"
O o	[ o ]	[ o ]	as o in "ocean"
U u	[ u ]	[ u ]	as u in "clue"

Consonants

Letter	Sampa	IPA	Equivalence
B b	[ b ]	[ b ]	as b in "bite"
C c	[ k ]	[ k ]	as c in "cat"
D d	[ d ]	[ d ]	as d in "dog"
F f	[ f ]	[ f ]	as f in "feet"
G g	[ g ]	[ g ]	as g in "gone"
H h	[ h~x ]	[ h~x ]	as h in "hill"
J j	[ j ]	[ j ]	as y in "yes"
K k	[ k ]	[ k ]	as k in "key"
L l	[ l ]	[ l ]	as l in "lap"
M m	[ m ]	[ m ]	as m in "moon"
N n	[ n ]	[ n ]	as n in "noon"
Ñ ñ	[ J ]	[ ɲ ]	as ny in "canyon"
P p	[ p ]	[ p ]	as p in "problem"
Q q	[ q ]	[ q ]	as q in "quip"
R r	[ r ]	[ r ]	Same as in Spanish (or the dd in "ladder")
S s	[ s ]	[ s ]	as s in "sand"
T t	[ t ]	[ t ]	as t in "top"
V v	[ v ]	[ v ]	as v in "very"
W w	[ w ]	[ w ]	as w in "wall"
Y y	[ j ]	[ j ]	as y in "yell"
Z z	[ z ]	[ z ]	as z in "zoo"

Tones

It also uses tones to differentiate between words.

Papiamento is a tonal language with a low-high tone and a high-low tone.

The stress on the words falls on the stem (main) syllable; deviations from it are marked with an accent.

These tones are are marked using accent marks over vowels: high (´) and low (`).

Vowels	Samples
á	altá, evitá
é	étiko, platé
í	asistí, tíket
ó	holó, ferfdó
ú	baúl, sunú
è	agènda, balèt
ò	blònt, fòndo
ù	drùif, bùs