In the Heir To The Gallery story, there are some characters that speak a foreign language, mazhigo, from time to time. While I do not intend on providing a lexicon or appendix until after the entire story is over, I have decided to provide here a pronunciation guide, so that people reading can at least appreciate the sound of the language.

The first thing to note about the language is that it is technically not syllabic; instead, the basic unit of phonetic measure is the mora. Essentially what this means is that every mora in the language takes the same amount of time to say when spoken. It takes a while to get used to, but it does provide a certain rhythm to the language.

The language has its own written alphabet aside from the the Latin one, but all conversations in the story are provided in romanization for simplicity. It should be pointed out that in the context of the story, learning the written language with the language helps clarify the idea of a mora. However, that is not entirely possible in reality, so an explanation of romanization will have to do.

The first type of mora in the language is simply a single vowel. The vowel is pronounced for one beat with no consonant interruption. The language has five vowels, which are presented in the following table:

The second type of mora in the language takes the form of a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound. Naturally, the vowel takes up more time, but the mora should still fit exactly one beat. There are quite a few consonant sounds used in the language. They are presented in the following table:

The third type of mora in the language is the full-length consonant sound. This is a single consonant sound that should take up an entire beat in the language. There are only two of them, as in the following table:

These are the three main types of mora, but there are some more. The fourth kind is similar to the second kind given above, but is really a glided combination of two mora smashed into one. They are a consonant glided with either the romanized y or w into the vowel. Despite the fact that it seems like two consonants, the mora should still take up one beat, just like every other mora. These are extended through all the vowels (with some exceptions) and through the consonants k, g, n, h, m, and r. A few examples are provided in the following table:

For the fifth kind of mora, it is the extended vowel. That is, if the romanization has two vowels in a row (for example, kaa), then the vowel sound is to be held through both beats. An exception would be if an apostrophe appears (for example, ka'a), in which case there should exist a glottal stop between the vowel sounds. If two different vowels are next to each other, they are each pronounced on separate beats, but it is somewhat expected for them to blend together slightly. The exception to this are the combinations ei and ou, which are to be treated as being equivilent to ee and oo respectively. The reason for this should be obvious given enough pronounciation.

The sixth kind of mora is the doubled consonant. If the consonant is romanized with just one character, that character is doubled (for example, kk), but if the consonant is romanized with two characters, then just the first character is doubled (for example, cchi). In these cases, the consonant sound should "take up" an extra beat before the actual mora. The most effective way to accomplish this is simply with a glottal stop; however, there should still be a significant pause. The words kite, kiite, and kitte are all pronounced differently! The first has only two beats, while the latter two both have three beats; the former should have a long vowel sound, while the latter should have a beat "pause" between the first and last morae.

Thus should be pretty much everything needed to adequately pronounce everything in mazhigo in Heir To The Gallery. No guarentees are given to any other language.