Broken April

A NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

The Albanian alphabet is phonetic; it sometimes uses two letters to indicate a single sound. Some Albanian letters have sound values that do not coincide with those of English. Among them are the following letters, which occur in proper names in Broken April:

Vowels

ë

an unstressed vowel, like “a” in “a lot”

y

German “u” or the “u” of French “rendu, attendu,” etc.

Consonants

c

“ts” as in “curtsy”

ç

“ch” as in “church”

dh

voiced “th” as in “there”

gj

“g” as in “gem”

j

“y” as in “yellow”

q

a sound approximating the shortened sound of “tu” as in “future”