Re: [lojban-beginners] Phonological assimilation

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Monday, October 15, 2012 13:31:16 mashers wrote:
> Am I to assume that phonological assimilation should be avoided when
> speaking Lojban aloud?

Depends on what you're assimilating. Concerning the nasals, /n/ may be 
assimilated to [ŋ] before /g,k,x/, but may not be assimilated to [ɱ] before 
/f,v/. Contrariwise /m/ may be assimilated before /f,v/, but not before 
/g,k,x/. (I'm not sure, without looking at it and trying to decode some 
krokozyabry, whether the refgram mentions [ɱ].)
fonxa
banfi
kumfa
simxu

It's different in Spanish, where "anfibio" is regularly pronounced with [ɱ]; the 
"nf", which explains the "nf" in "banfi", is just a spelling rule, and there's 
only one distinct nasal preceding a stop or fricative or at the end of a word 
(not counting foreign words). And it's different still in English, which 
distinguishes three nasals at the end of a word. One must not be too hasty to 
be discharged from a hospital, for one would be an impatient inpatient.

There are also several allophones of /r/, which I use in different 
environments. This isn't really assimilation, as there's nothing tap-like 
about the two vowels in "flira" or roll-like about the "o" or "s" in "morsi".

Assimilation of voicing between stops and fricatives does not occur in lujvo; 
instead, one sticks the interfix /ə/ (<y>) between them. If such a pair comes 
up in a fu'ivla, you can't stick an interfix, but you can assimilate a 
consonant. The consonant is then written as assimilated. For instance, one 
can't say "tcadrvisbadne", but one can say "tcadrvispadne" or "tcadrvizbadne".

Pierre
-- 
When a barnacle settles down, its brain disintegrates.
Já não percebe nada, já não percebe nada.

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