Costanice was originally conceived as "Castillian Greek", so its general pronunciation features are similar to those found in Castilian Spanish. There are some important differences, however, which are discussed below.

Consonants

The following table shows the consonantal phonemes in Costanice:

Voiceless stops are unaspirated and pronounced very crisply.

Voiced stops are pronounced as stops only when initial or preceded by a nasal. In other positions, they are pronounced as spirants. Thus, /b d g/ become /β δ γ/.

The /v/ phoneme is very marginal. It only occurs intervocalically, and has a strong tendency to merge with /b/, which is [β] intervocalically. Many speakers pronounce /v/ as [β], thus merging it with /b/.

Before front vowels, /k/ and /g/ become [tʃ] and [x] respectively. Unlike in Spanish, this actually creates alternations within a paradigm: /igo/ > [iγo], /ige/ > [ixe].

Vowels

The only vowel phones are [i u e o a]. However, sometimes a vowel which is [e] in unstressed syllables becomes [je] in stressed syllables, and likewise [o] may become [we] when the stress falls upon it. Under the standard analysis these alternating vowels are actually separate phonemes, which are written in the orthography as {ê} and {ô}. We will continue using these symbols for convenience throughout this text. Therefore, we identify seven vowel phonemes: /i e ê a u o ô/, of which /ê/ and /ô/ alternate with [je] and [we] when stressed.

However, post-tonic syllables (those occurring after the main word stress) only three vowels contrast: [e o a]. The high vowels /i/ and /u/ are lowered to [e o] when they occur in this position. Stress is lexically and morphologically important, so this also creates alternations.

The following table illustrates some of the possible alternations:

Stress

Stress in Costanice may fall on any of the last three syllables. Its position is somewhat lexical and somewhat morphological.

Nouns and adjectives almost always have stress on the penultimate syllable, and never on the final syllable. A few words (most of them borrowings) have stress on the antepenult. Stress on nouns and adjectives is always fixed, and does not move in response to declension.

Verbs may have stress anywhere. On verbs, the position of the stress is almost always morphological, governed by rules of verb conjugation and the class that the verb belongs to. Thus, it is on verbs that we observe most of the stress-governed alternations discussed above.

Other parts of speech (prepositions, articles, etc.) are technically stressless. They generally behave as if they have post-tonic stress.

Liason

Costanice abhors hiatus between vowels at word-boundaries, and always resolves it either through epenthesis or vowel-dropping. Thus, whenever a word that normally ends with a vowel precedes a word that begins with a vowel, something takes place to prevent the vowels from coalescing. This process is known as liason. For this process, the semivowels [j] and [w] are considered consonants. The process is lexical: some words add a consonant, others drop a vowel.

The most usual epenthetic consonant is /n/, which is used as the default for words that do not specify another consonant, which is most of them. E.g.: to zruebo, "the person"; ton igo, "the house".

However, some words add a different, lexically determined consonant. Huesga(r), for example, adds an /r/: Huesga sí, "because you (sg)..."; Huesgar imas, "because you (pl)..."

Other forms drop the vowel. The 2pl verbal conjugation is among these: poyide tudo, "you (pl) do this"; poyíd arte?, "you (pl) do what?" Note that the stress remains on the same syllable, so an accent mark has to be written in the forms lacking final /e/.

Some words alternate completely based on liason. Most propositions and the present conjugation of "to be" are this way. Thus "from" is either ap or po depending on whether or not the following word begins with a vowel: po tudos, "from this one"; ap otos,"from him".

For even more fun, these alternations can create a domino effect, since the pre-vocalic form of the prepositions and "to be" do themselves begin with a vowel. E.g.: Arte sti po tudos?, "What is from this one?"; Arten est ap otos?, "What is from him?"

There are a handful of vowel-final monosyllabic words that lose their only vowel when the following word begins with a vowel. In this case, the word simply becomes an onset for the following word. E.g.: ce tudo [tʃe'tuδo], "And this..."; ci' oto ['tʃoto], "And he..."

Spelling

Spelling is more or less as in Spanish, with the exceptions noted below.

The following letters are pronounced as in English: {f l m n p s t v}.

The voiced stops are spelled {b d g}, and pronounced as stops initially or after a nasal, and elsewhere as the corresponding fricatives.

The letter {c} is pronounced [k] before a back vowel (/a o u/) and [tʃ] before a front vowel (/e i/). The letter {g} similarly alternates, but it is pronounced [g] (or [γ]) before a back vowel and [x] before a front vowel.

The letter {h} is silent in all cases. When it occurs at the beginning of a word it indicates that the word, although being spelled with an initial vowel, does not cause the liason with the previous word. Other instances are purely idiosycratic or etymological, and even in word-initial position the letter is not strictly necessary because lack of liason can usually be inferred.

The letter {x} always spells [x]. The letter {z} always spells [θ].

In modern Costanice, the letter {y} and the digraph {ll} are both pronounced as [j]. The difference between them is purely etymological.

The vowels {i e a o u} are pronounced like the corresponding IPA symbols. The vowels {ê} and {ô} are pronounced just like /e/ and /o/--their spelling is etymological. When {i} or {u} occurs before another vowel, they represent [j] and [w] respectively, unless marked with an accent.

Stress is on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable unless marked differently. When the stress falls on a syllable other than the penultimate, it is marked with an acute accent. Sometimes an acute accent is used on monosyllable words to distinguish homophones.

When liason causes the only vowel to be dropped from a monosyllabic word, an apostrophe is inserted in place of the vowel but the remaining consonant(s) are still written as a separate word. The word {ce} under liason is written as {ci'}.

Some examples: