| The apostrophe is NOT a glottal stop or any kindof pause – such critters
function differently in Lojban. It is a voiceless fricative different fromall the others in the language (x,c,s,f)and it also should not be confusablewith a glide between two vowels (/a’e/ should not be confusable with /aie/, say). The official line is that it is IPA[h]. However, many speakers do notalways distinguish x from [h] (indeed [h] is an allophone of /x/ even instandard Lojban) and [h] is often in effect a voiceless formof the followingvowel, causing a glidelike sound when the following vowel is almost anythingbut /a/ or /y/ (and maybe then, for all I can tell). When unclarity arises in either of these ways, I use andrecommend IPA theta (the “th” sound most places except before “e” in English),which has neither of these problems. Even I, however, cannot remember to use it until the problem arises. |