Subject: Re: [lojban] Commas and vowel pairs

From: "Adam Raizen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 23:53:17 +0200

> "Commas are never required: no two Lojban words differ solely because 
> of the presence or placement of a comma." 

This would seem to imply that you can omit the comma in a word 
like "banrkorea" and it will be implied by the otherwise 
impermissible vowel pair. Practically, I don't see why this would 
cause any problems, though clusters like "aa" look ugly and 
loglandic :-)

While we're at it, the book also says (Chapter 3, section 3):

"The comma is used to indicate a syllable break within a word, 
generally one that is not obvious to the reader. Such a comma is 
written to separate syllables, but indicates that there must be no 
pause between them, in contrast to the period. Between two 
vowels, a comma indicates that some type of glide may be 
necessary to avoid a pause that would split the two syllables into 
separate words. It is always legal to use the apostrophe (IPA [h]) 
sound in pronouncing a comma."

Since the comma can be and often is used in a place such as 
"ban,rkore,a", does that mean that that word can be pronounced 
/banhrkorEha/? Can it be written "ban'rkore'a"? Maybe it should 
have been specified that the comma can be pronounced as an 
apostrophe whenever it's between vowels.

co'o mi'e adam