As of this week, sometimes.
Up until then, not really, no; they'd simply elide one letter or the
other; {dirba} -> "DIH-ba", "fart" -> "faht", "aunt" -> "aht".
There are a lot more English words where that works without
confusion, and a *LOT* more English words that simply don't have any
significant consonant clusters. They've been saying "banana" (or at
least "nana") for ages, for example.
This was my point: given the choice between a language with lots of
words they can see, and one with lots they can't, they pick the
former.
-Robin
On Tue, Sep 03, 2013 at 03:50:09AM -0600, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> Can they do clusters /at all/?
>
>
> Also, can they say "pigeon"? I ask because if they can say "pigeon", then
> {cidja} shouldn't be too far down the road from pronounceable, I expect.
>
>