L1
Strokes
Each sign is a key. The stroke is the shank and gives the consonant; the mark is the bit and gives the vowel. There are eight strokes, and this lesson is all of them.
Every sign begins with a stroke, written first and from the top down. The stroke tells you the consonant. Learn eight shapes and eight sounds and you have half of the script.
| Stroke | Sound | How to remember it |
|---|---|---|
| hook | k | The pen falls and the curl rises at the back, as the back of the tongue lifts to make k. |
| turned hook | n | The same movement facing the other way: the tip of the tongue, with the breath turned through the nose. |
| crook | the catch (ʔ) | The catch comes first, then the fall: a catch in the throat. It even looks like the phonetic sign for it. |
| cup | s | A cupped groove, like the tongue grooved to let a hiss through. |
| loop | m | The tail comes back and closes, like the lips. |
| S-hook | r | A wave: the tongue tapping, or rolling when it matters. |
| angle | t | Cut rather than written: a hard stop at the tip of the tongue. |
| barred hook | kh | The hook struck through: k with its closure knocked out, leaving a rasp, as in the Scottish loch. |
kh is one sound, not two. Somka has no h of its own, so kh never means k followed by h.
The crook is the quietest stroke. Before a vowel the catch is so light that you hardly hear it, and the next lesson shows what that means for reading.