The orthography is comparable to English. 'i' is always pronounced 'ee', and it is written as 'y' at the end of a word. 'o' is pronounced 'oo'. Words are accented on the penult, unless the word ends in "ka", "tra", or "na", in which case it is accented on the antepenult. Unstressed vowels are often elided; thus fanorona is pronounced "fanoorn" and Malagasy sounds like its French transliteration "Malgache".
External Link: Ethnologue report for Malagasy