Phonology of the Language of Cthulhu

Home

Return to Cthulhu Introduction

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
/ˈpʼˤŋ̩.lʊı ˈ^ŋgˡʷˤnɑfʼ ˈktʼʊ.ɮʊ ˈɾˤlʲe ˈꞵgaħ.ˌnɑgˡ ˈfʼtɑ.gn̩/
[ˈpʼˤŋ̩.lʊı ˈ^ŋgˡʷˤnɑfʼ ˈkʼtʼʊ:.ɮʊ ˈɺˤʲe ˈꞵɣaħ.ˌnɑgˡ ˈfʼtʼɑ:.gn̩]

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. The sections on rationale are essential to genuinely understand the language, but they can be skipped if you're only looking to pronounce this specific sentence. 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, including Arabic but practically nothing else. 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. It may be a good idea to try this with a more familiar sound that exists in English so that you only balance one unfamiliar variable rather than two; if it sounds like you're being strangled, you're doing it right; the key is to get that sound without actually being strangled.

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. The only sticking point for most people is that here it acts like a vowel. English does this too, where "button" has an n on the end without a vowel to separate it from the first syllable. We only do this with m and n, never ng, but the principle is the same.

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 and labialization, pharyngealization, etc., 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 a fricative. L is almost like a vowel: it's relatively open in your mouth. Lh is closed, like z. This consonant, technically termed a lateral fricative, is rare in Europe but found in languages like Mongolian, Zulu, and Classical Arabic (what the mad Arab Alhazred would have spoken).

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 (heard in "measure"). And of course the final u is the same as the first one.

In "R'lyeh", we get into what are called allophones. In every language, technical pronunciation is different from actual speech. You know that "G says guh", but it doesn't on the end of a word: it isn't "dogga", it's "dog". Both G's are considered the same, but pronounced diifferently. The R'lyehian r is a tap, like in Spanish, where you flick the tip of your tongue forward like a very brief d. It is also, due to the apostrophe in this particular word, pharyngealized. However, because it is followed by an l, and as explained under "mglw'nafh", l tends to slide backward onto the previous consonant, it's turned into what's termed a lateral tap.

The r in "R'lyeh" is tapped, like in Spanish, where you flick the tip of your tongue forward like a very brief d. It is also, due to the apostrophe in this particular word, pharyngealized. However, because it is followed by an l, and as explained under "mglw'nafh", l tends to slide backward onto the previous consonant, released to the sides of your tongue. It's very similar to the lateral release in "mglw'nafh". If you're ambitious and going for a perfect accent, air should release around your tongue the whole time, not just at the end of the consonant, but that isn't strictly necessary.

At this point, a fairly consistent pattern has appeared. W and l are both what are termed approximant consonants, because they are only approximated: you don't actually close your mouth, like with obstruents (obstructed consonants) such as k, you just constrict it a little. And both of them slide backward onto previous consonants (if they don't come after a consonant they can be pronounced properly, but not after consonants). Y is also an approximant, so naturally it would behave similarly. It's termed a palatal approximant, because it's made with the part of your mouth called the palate, and it palatalizes previous consonants.

This l-released, pharyngealized Spanish r has one more component: it is what is called palatalized, a contribution by the following letter y. Say the y sound in "yellow", feeling part of your tongue tense up toward the roof of your mouth, and keep it tensed there. Then everything you say will sound partly like a normal sound and partly like a y at the same time. If you speak a Romance language this is what you do when you say gn or ñ. Do this for "R'lyeh".

Now we have another h, this time following a vowel. So far, h has made consonants more constricted; for a vowel, it does something similar, called tensing, where a vowel becomes tighter and clearer, like English i in "fit" can tense to ee in "see" (from a purely phonetic perspective, though confusingly they're spelled with different letters). Similarly, eh is a tense e.

A plain e is pronounced like in "bet". However, "eh" is slightly different. It sounds a little like a long a in "bake", but that usually starts like in "bet" and slides into an ee like in "see". A Cthulhu eh is sort of between those, and doesn't float around; if you speak Spanish (Italian works too), it's the Spanish e. There's basically nowhere in English we use it, except one small dialect I'll just mention on the off chance you happen to soeak it: if you can speak with a New England accent (especially eastern Massachussetts and Rhode Island) it's the a in "Mary" or any word with a long A plus an R.

If you can't say that, substituting a long A works too, but it isn't quite as faithful to the underlying logic of the language.

Next we have "wgah'nagl". Here there's a w on its own, with no preceding consonant to apply lip-rounding to. So it's a bit like lip-rounding without a consonant, which sounds strange but actually works.

The w in "wgah'nagl" is a bit tricky: if you speak Spanish, it's what "b" turns into between vowels—not a w, not a v, but somewhere between. More precisely, v is pronounced with your lower lip against your upper teeth; the Cthulhu w is pronounced with your lower lip against your upper lip.

The g after is another thing where theoretical versus actual pronunciation are different. A genuine wg sequence is very difficult (though not impossible) to pronounce. So the g is softened slightly, a common process in languages.

The g in "wgah'nagl" is a bit softer than normal. If you speak Spanish, it's the g in "agua"; it's like a drawn-out g. The difference between s and z is you hum while you say z; similarly, say the ch in Bach (with a genuine German accent) and hum while you say it. That can take a bit of practice, but it's honestly one of the easier pronunciations here.

Similarly to "eh" above, "ah" is a tense vowel.

The "ah" is pronounced like the "a" in "cat". Note that this is exactly reversed compared to English, where "a" is usually like "cat" and "ah" is usually like "father".

Now there's an apostrophe. Earlier, it pharyngealized a consonant; now, after a vowel, it stands alone, like w did. So it becomes a pure pharyngeal, not a pharyngealized version of something else. A similar logic holds for all the modifiers (w, h, ', y, l) when you don't follow a consonant.

When you pharyngealized the consonants earlier, you did two things at once: you said the basic consonant, and you did something with your throat. Now, basically, do the thing with your throat like a harsh, guttural h, and don't do anything else in your actual mouth. That's how the apostrophe is pronounced after a vowel or at the beginning of a word.

The rest of "wgah'nagl" is fairly simple; n is n, a is like in "father" as described above, and the only hard bit is the gl: remember, the l cannot turn into a separate syllable like in "wiggle". It's just how you release the g, around the sides of your tongue, and it doesn't continue into a full-on l sound.

Finally, we come to the last word: the fh is ejected like in "mglw'nafh", t is a normal t (NB: although it's completely acceptable to eject it to, via influence of the ejective f, to smoothe out pronunciation; similarly, you may eject the c in Cthulhu, or any other non-ejective which is next to an ejective. If that sounds too complicated, you don't have to and it's completely correct that way too.),

And that's the end of the famous sentence Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. If you can pronounce it you may want to go into a career as a polyglot; it may take several rereadings of this page and a lot of practice. In future I may add an audio file of myself pronouncing it so that you can hear it directly.

Notice: At this point I will move from a breakdown and rationale of the sentence itself, to extrapolating onto the language as a whole. This will be more abstract, but at the same time much easier since you've gotten through all the pronunciation. Below, I will list all of the sounds found in the language, what is termed a phonemic inventory. This will list all of the consonants and vowels, and how to pronounce and write them. This is of course using the system by which Professor Webb transcribed the chant with the help of a cultist in Greenland*; although Lovecraft repeatedly describes the language as being written in unidentifiable hieroglyphics, for practical purposes (for example, hieroglyphs cannot be typed on a computer), I will use the English (technically Latin) alphabet. I may at some point construct a writing system that matches Lovecraft's descriptions more closely, but that is not my first priority.
*Call of Cthulhu

Consonants

The consonants are divided into four groups: sharp consonants, hard glides, soft glides, and fluid consonants. These categories do not strictly map onto any phonetic properties; they're only groups of consonants treated the same in the language.
These will be abbreviated Sh, H, S, and F, respectively.

Notes: I intend to add audio pronunciation for each of these consonants, particularly those which are very rare in most languages. Unfortunately, Neocities does not allow free users to store audio files, and as this website, to my knowledge, has no dedicated following, I don't think it's worth paying for. I do want to find a way around this.

Soft glides, when they come at the bginning of a word or after a vowel, are pronounced as consonants: w as an English w (But in English, the back of your tongue presses against the roof of your mouth; if you're able to avoid it, don't do that: only use your lips.), y like an English y, l like English, and ' the pharyngeal fricative, the sound deep in your throat in "wgah'nagl". When they come after a consonant, they respectively labialize it, palatalize it, give it lateral release, or pharyngealize it. These are not mutually exclusive; several or all may apply to the same underlying consonant. H is usually paired with a previous letter to spell a new sound (a digraph) but when it comes at the beginning of a word is pronounced like in English, in those dialects which pronounce it at all (as opposed to some British dialects).

Vowels

The vowels come in two types, weak and strong. Each weak vowel has a strong match, and vice versa: a weak-strong pair of vowel will sound similar to each other, but slightly different. They may also combine into diphthongs, two vowels next to each other that slur into one. In English, that happens when a long a can be broken down into a short e and a long e: eh turns into ee, but very quickly and we call it a new vowel. Although English treats dipthongs as vowels in their own right, most languages treat them as two vowels that slur together, which is phonetically more accurate. In the language of Cthulhu, each dipthong must be only weak or only strong: a weak vowel can never slur into a strong vowel, and vice versa.

The weak vowels are a as in father, e as in bet, i as in thin, o as in pot, and u as in put. O can be pronounced several different ways in English; here it's "thought" with a British accent. The strong vowels are ah as in "cat", eh (see above under "R'lyeh"), ih as in see, oh as in toe, and uh as in shoe. Notes on accent: oh isn't exactly like in English, but it's close. For maximum authenticity, and faithfulness to the underlying logic, use a Spanish or Italian accent. Also, for uh, in English the vowel in "you" is often slightly far forward in the mouth, somewhere between an oo and a German ü; if you think it's too far forward, use an Italian accent. Italian is famous for having very pure vowels that don't move around, which is part of why it's so well-suited to singing.

Words in the Cthulhu language have predictable stress. That's what the accent marks in Spanish; the first syllable is emphasized like in "record" in "I collect records", and it's never stressed on the second syllable as in "The stenographer records the interview." You then stress alternating syllables after that, following the pattern of emphasis in the word "watermelon".

If you're especially dedicated there's another subtler stress pattern: you emphasize unstressed syllables slightly more than normal if they end in consonants, making them slightly closer in intensity to real stressed syllables; this happens in "wgah'nagl", where "wgah'" is stressed heavily and "nagl" lightly, whereas in "Ph'nglui", "lui" isn't stressed at all. However, this is purely intonation, and will never throw off meaning, so treat it as a lower priority than actually pronouncing all the complicated consonants.