Re: [lojban-beginners] English w and y sounds

[Jacob Errington <nictytan@gmail.com>]

On 27 August 2014 16:12, TR NS <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:

Let me ask a follow-up question. How would something like "caio" (sha-yo) be interpreted? I assume it will be considered two cmavo, "ca" and "io". But then I (almost) never see a word like "io" used anywhere but at the beginning of a sentence and never with out a clear stop `.io`.

It can only be interpreted as {ca io}, and the dot before the word "io" is not necessary, since the approximant there is a consonant, not a vowel. In other words, it's the sound /j/ and not /i/, despite the spelling. The appearance of this consonant forces the beginning of a new syllable (all syllables begin with a consonant), and the word boundary is determined by the lack of stress / consonant clusters around.

This is confirmed by the camxes parser, which properly implements the morphology.

http://camxes.lojban.org/?text=caio

The "all syllables must begin with a consonant" rule is the reason for putting dots before words that (would otherwise) start with a vowel, such as {.a}: the dot is a consonant.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

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