How to Explain the Pronunciation of a Conlang Within the Text of the Novel
In novels which contain a constructed language (conlang), there are areas where the rules of pronunciation can be specified. These areas have the disadvantage of either being before the story and rapidly boring the reader (preface/prologue), or being after the story and likely being overlooked until the story has been read (epilogue/glossary).
The other option is of course to infodump the rules of pronunciation somewhere within the story itself. I have discovered that there are those who believe infodumping is not a bad thing, so I will simply suggest that the majority of writers and readers will wish to avoid it. I am one of those writers.
The only other option is to somehow include it in the story in a natural way, so that it doesn't feel forced, and the reader learns the pronunciation without even realizing he is learning grammatical rules of a language that does not exist.
How can I do this? Obviously methods will change from story to story, but is there perhaps a general method that can be used? (Assume that we do not have access to the familiar non-native-speaker-who-needs-to-be-educated scenario.)
In my current work, I have a language where the letter 'h' is silent. I am using it to separate vowel sounds, rather than an apostrophe. So something like Ga'ino'i becomes Gahinohi. It looks far better. The reader will of course pronounce it Ga-HEE-no-hee, or something similar. How can I inform him, within the body of the novel itself, that all 'h's are silent?
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If you don't have a non-native or non-fluent cabbagehead character (and they're awfully useful; I don't know why you're hobbling yourself like that), then another reasonable course of action is to have someone who speaks the language badly and has to be corrected. A child learning how to speak/read or someone who is severely undereducated might work. Then your problem is that the adult or more learned characters are constantly correcting the other one, and may come off as arrogant or know-it-alls.
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