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Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
/pʼˤŋlʊı ᵑgˡʷˤnɑfʼ ktʼʊ.ɮʊ ɾˤlʲe ˈꞵgaħ.ˌnɑgˡ ˈfʼtɑ.gn/
[pʼˤŋlʊı ᵑgˡʷˤnɑfʼ ˈkʼtʼʊ:.ɮʊ ɺˤʲe ˈꞵɣaħ.ˌnɑgˡ ˈfʼtʼɑ:.gn]
Although everything about a language, from how quickly it's spoken to how words are derived to the culture of its speakers, determines its unique character, pronunciation stands out above all. Although the presence of a formal versus informal "you" is a key part of the French language, few non-French speakers are even aware of its existence; much more recognizable are the nasal vowels in "Est en un bon vin blanc." Although Spanish distinguishes many nuances of verb tense, much more recognizable is its fast rate of speech. And more relevant to Cthulhu, although German can form infinitely long words by stacking words on top of each other, arguably a more important feature, it is much more recognizable for its harsh, aggressive sound to English-speaking ears.
Because of this, phonology is a very important aspect of the Cthulhu language—and because it must combine both aesthetic and linguistic plausibility, significantly more care and effort goes into it than goes into most languages. For context, I created the entire phonology of Ebören in about an hour of throwing ideas around, and I was able to do most of it in my head. The phonology of Cthulhu took me a two or three hour extremely focused session of intensive work, taking a lot of notes, and another hour the next day to refine and consolidate everything into a formal system.
The obvious place to start is by looking at how Lovecraft himself pronounced his own words. Unfortunately, he was not a linguist, and although he was a master writer, he never gave much though to the language itself; in fact, the sentence "Phn'glui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'ley wgah'nagl ftagn" is the only example I'm aware of of words spoken by Cthulhu*. Lovecraft himself gave different pronunciations on different occasions. Most people pronounce "Cthulhu" as "kuh-THOO-loo", and I originally intended it to be pronounced roughly along those lines. However, after incorporating it into the rest of the sentence I realized I would have contradictory spellings everywhere. I realized that I would need to do a significant amount of artistic interpretation. Wherever possible, I try as much as I can to match the feel given by Lovecraft's descriptions. Even though I'm the one creating the language, I'm only partly in charge; I do have some freedom, but Lovecraft has literally written volumes of context and description that I'm trying to match to.
*I have not, however, read everything by him, and don't take into account additions by later authors; at some point another word or two might exist that I'm not aware of.
All right, now we can really get into how this all works. Even though it looks like my only source material is very short—it's only six words—it's possible to get an enormous amount of detail from it. I'll go through my thought process in set-aside blocks, but if you're only interested in the end result, feel free to skip ahead to that. I'll preface this with the warning that it isn't very intuitive; Cthulhu isn't human, so it's in all honesty surprising it isn't less understandable. However, it's chanted at rituals by Eskimos and voodooists, and heard in dreams, so it is pronounceable, however barely: everything has a precedent in some human language. Now I'll jump into a piece-by-piece analysis of the phrase itself, which is invaluable for pronouncing it; later, I'll generalize to the language as a whole.
Right away, there's the word "Ph'nglui". The first thing to do is understand how the h relates to the p: clearly the h isn't pronounced like an h, because that would be unpronounceable. The most common interpretation is to read it as an f sound, like in "physics". In that case p and f are both sounds you make with your lips, but with p you stop the air completely and with f you let you it flow out. Here, h is making the sound more continuous, which is what it does with t to th, or in other language k to kh where you turn the k into a fricative: a continuous flowing-out of air. But there's a big problem with that: if that's what h does, then how do you pronounce the fh in mglw'nafh? It's already continuous, so you can't make it more continuous. There's only one other thing h usually does to p in languages, which it does in Hindi but not English: you spit out some air at the end, which is called aspiration. So kh is like the k in "kitchen", but but k is like the k in "skillet", if that makes sense. If you're interested, try saying the k in those words with your hand in front of your mouth and feeling a puff of air in "kitchen" but not "skillet". But again fh throws the whole thing off: that works for p, because p is a stop consonant. There's a big contrast between not breathing out air and then breathing a lot of it out at once. But with f, you're blowing air out continuously, so by definition it's already aspirated. I needed a good function for h that matched every instance of its use without looking like case-by-case patching-up. So I went for an effect that the sound h actually sometimes has on pronunciation, though it isn't common in spelling: it can make consonants, and more often vowels, more constricted in your mouth. So I decided to turn both ph and fh into what are called ejectives, which I'll explain below.
Most sounds in English, you pronounce by breathing out. You can't talk forever, because eventually you run out of air. But that's an English thing: some languages use tongue clicks as parts of words, which we don't in English. Others have sounds where you breathe in instead of out. The particular thing we're interested in here is when you don't breathe at all, like with clicks: say the letter k, like in "kitchen". Now say it wouthout breathing out—close your throat completely. Build up air pressure behind your tongue, and spit it out in a burst. If you're British, some dialects do this with sounds at the ends of words to emphasize them. This does take some practice, but imagine it this way: when you say "tsk", you're doing this to letter t, but backward, sucking air inward. You want to do it spitting air outward. This is called an ejective consonant, and ph, fh, and th are all pronounced this way. The th in Cthulhu isn't pronounced like the English th; it's an ejective t.
The next part is the apostrophe. The apostrophe, believe it or not, is actually used as a letter in some languages, such as Arabic (where you pronounce it like the dash in uh-oh) and transliterations of Russian (where it makes a sound softer and adds a y-like sound) and Georgian (where it turns the previous letter into an ejective). The most common uses are those in Arabic and Georgian. However, it can't work like in Arabic because following a p is unpronounceable, and it can't be like Georgian either because the p is already ejective: you can't make it more ejective. Although I could make it like in Russian, I thought that wasn't a very good idea, partly because Cthulhu is anything but soft and gentle, and partly because there's no clear way to interpret the h' in wgah'nagl: h isn't even pronounced (see previous paragraph, and later sections), and if you skip back over it there's no way to have that effect on a vowel. I thought the most likely pronunciation was similar to in Georgian, where it marks ejectives, but not exactly that because h does that. So instead, I interpreted it in an unusual but plausible (especially given later on, with how it works with w, y, and l) way: pharyngealization, which is a process used in languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and some Native American languages. For details on how to do it see below; it adds a very dark, emphatic flavor.
The p in ph'nglui is what is called pharyngealized. It's notoriously difficult for foreigners to pronounce, and only exists in about one percent of languages. Before you give up, just note that the th sound in "think" is even rarer; it just happens to exist in English, which is more widespread. There's no easy way to do it; the best thing you can do is physically strangle yourself with your hand while saying ph. Once you're comfortable with the way it feels in your mouth you can try doing it without your hand.
This is self-evident from the spelling. See below.
The ng in ph'nglui is extremely simple: it's the ng in "hang". NOT the ng in "jungle"; it's a pure consonant, without transitioning into a g.
Although it would have been easy to interpret the u in ph'glui as the oo in "food", I actually made it into the oo in "book", partly because it's easier to glide into an ee sound, and partly because it's less pure and clear, which fits the aesthetic more naturally. The i is like an ee.
The u in ph'nglui is like in "book", gliding into an ee like how the e in "weigh" glides from the e in "wet" into a long ee.
The mg in mglw'nafh is more difficult to interpret, but I ultimately decided it would be the ng in "jungle", turning into a hard g, which distinguishes it in writing from ng which can be ambiguous.
The mg in mglw'nafh is pronounced like in "jungle", turning into a hard g.
Although there's no obvious reasoning at this point, taking into account the the -gl word ending in wgah'nagl, a new feature seems important: lateral release. This basically slurs an l onto a consonant, which while not especially guttural adds a unique, heavy flavor.
When you say l, you can feel air flowing around the sides of your tongue, which doesn't happen for any other sounds. When you say "glue", the g is released around the sides of your tongue in anticipation of how l is pronounced. That slight change in releasing g is lateral release, and l is a lateral consonant. In mglw'nafh, the g in ng is released laterally, but only the release; it doesn't flow into a pure l sound like in English.
Next is the w. Although I could technically treat it as an actual w, and to a certain extend I mostly do, that adds another consonant. Throughout the sentence my modus operandi has been to make long clusters of sounds pronounceable not by dropping letters or implying unwritten vowels, but by treating many letters as modifiers. The h in ph'nglui, the apostrophe, the l, et cetera. Furthermore, as I plan to explain at the end of this breakdown, it fits a broader rule that arose almost on its own, without my intention. So the w still sounds like a w, but it modifies the g. In any case, a g, w, and n, in that order, tend not to be pronounceable without turning the w into a kind of vowel.
The w modifies the g. When you say "oo", you can feel your lips rounding. Keep them there, firmly in place, and say "guh". That's called labialization, and it adds a w simultaneous to the rest of the sound. Now you can pronounce this whole sound: mglw'. The ng sound, labialized and pharyngealized (apostrophe), released laterally. This is a fairly dense sound, so it may take time to master.
The n needs no explanation; it's easy to understand.
The n is pronounced like an n, so the mglw' sound transitions into an n: stripping off modifiers, you get gn, like in "agnostic".
The a is fairly simply to understand; I chose "ah" as opposed to the a in "cat" simply because it sounds slightly more formal. It's the Latin a, and the English short a sounds higher-pitched and brighter.
The a is pronounced ah, as in "father". To finish off this word, as mentioned above, the fh is an ejected f.
Here we come to "Cthulhu", Lovecraft's most famous word. The k is a k, the t is ejected, the u is a soft "oo", and then we have lh. Following the above rationale of h as making consonants more constricted, l is turned into what is called a fricative. L is almost like a vowel: it's relatively open in your mouth. Lh is closed, like z.
Cthu is pronounced with k and t ejected, and the u vowel in "book". To pronounce the lh, say a normal l, and close your jaw until your teeth are clenched. As you feel your tongue press against the roof of your mouth, you'll hear something between an l and a French j. And of course the final u is the same as the first one.