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The Hills Are Alive With The Sounds Of Lojban - The Lojban Reference Grammar
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<h3><a id="s4" name="s4">4. Diphthongs and Syllabic Consonants</h3>
<p>There exist 16 diphthongs in the Lojban language. A
diphthong is a vowel sound that consists of two elements, a
short vowel sound and a glide, either a labial (IPA <span
class="c3">[w]</span>) or palatal (IPA <span
class="c3">[j]</span>) glide, that either precedes (an
on-glide) or follows (an off-glide) the main vowel. Diphthongs
always constitute a single syllable.</p>
<p>For Lojban purposes, a vowel sound is a relatively long
speech-sound that forms the nucleus of a syllable. Consonant
sounds are relatively brief and normally require an
accompanying vowel sound in order to be audible. Consonants may
occur at the beginning or end of a syllable, around the vowel,
and there may be several consonants in a cluster in either
position. Each separate vowel sound constitutes a distinct
syllable; consonant sounds do not affect the determination of
syllables.</p>
<p>The six Lojban vowels are ``a'', ``e'', ``i'', ``o'', ``u'',
and ``y''. The first five vowels appear freely in all kinds of
Lojban words. The vowel ``y'' has a limited distribution: it
appears only in Lojbanized names, in the Lojban names of the
letters of the alphabet, as a glue vowel in compound words, and
standing alone as a space-filler word (like English ``uh'' or
``er'').</p>
<p>The Lojban diphthongs are shown in the table below. (Variant
pronunciations have been omitted, but are much as one would
expect based on the variant pronunciations of the separate
vowel letters: ``ai'' may be pronounced <span
class="c3">[ɑj]</span>, for example.)</p>
<p></p>
<pre>
Letters IPA Description
ai <span
class="c3">[aj]</span> an open vowel with palatal off-glide
ei <span
class="c3">[ɛj]</span> a front mid vowel with palatal off-glide
oi <span
class="c3">[oj]</span> a back mid vowel with palatal off-glide
au <span
class="c3">[aw]</span> an open vowel with labial off-glide
ia <span
class="c3">[ja]</span> an open vowel with palatal on-glide
ie <span
class="c3">[jɛ]</span> a front mid vowel with palatal on-glide
ii <span
class="c3">[ji]</span> a front close vowel with palatal on-glide
io <span
class="c3">[jo]</span> a back mid vowel with palatal on-glide
iu <span
class="c3">[ju]</span> a back close vowel with palatal on-glide
ua <span
class="c3">[wa]</span> an open vowel with labial on-glide
ue <span
class="c3">[wɛ]</span> a front mid vowel with labial on-glide
ui <span
class="c3">[wi]</span> a front close vowel with labial on-glide
uo <span
class="c3">[wo]</span> a back mid vowel with labial on-glide
uu <span
class="c3">[wu]</span> a back close vowel with labial on-glide
iy <span
class="c3">[jə]</span> a central mid vowel with palatal on-glide
uy <span
class="c3">[wə]</span> a central mid vowel with labial on-glide
</pre>
(Approximate English equivalents of most of these diphthongs
exist: see <a href="s11.html">Section 11</a> for examples.)
<p>The first four diphthongs above (``ai'', ``ei'', ``oi'', and
``au'', the ones with off-glides) are freely used in most types
of Lojban words; the ten following ones are used only as
stand-alone words and in Lojbanized names and borrowings; and
the last two (``iy'' and ``uy'') are used only in Lojbanized
names.</p>
<p>The syllabic consonants of Lojban, <span
class="c3">[l̩]</span>, <span class="c3">[m̩]</span>, <span
class="c3">[n̩]</span>, and <span class="c3">[r̩]</span>, are
variants of the non-syllabic <span class="c3">[l]</span>, <span
class="c3">[m]</span>, <span class="c3">[n]</span>, and <span
class="c3">[r]</span> respectively. They normally have only a
limited distribution, appearing in Lojban names and borrowings,
although in principle any ``l'', ``m'', ``n'', or ``r'' may be
pronounced syllabically. If a syllabic consonant appears next
to a ``l'', ``m'', ``n'', or ``r'' that is not syllabic, it may
not be clear which is which:</p>
<pre>
<a id="e4d1" name="e4d1">4.1)</a> brlgan.
<span class="c3">[br̩l gan]</span>
or <span class="c3">[brl̩ gan]</span>
</pre>
is a hypothetical Lojbanized name with more than one valid
pronunciation; however it is pronounced, it remains the same
word.
<p>Syllabic consonants are treated as consonants rather than
vowels from the standpoint of Lojban morphology. Thus
Lojbanized names, which are generally required to end in a
consonant, are allowed to end with a syllabic consonant. An
example is ``rl.'', which is an approximation of the English
name ``Earl'', and has two syllabic consonants.</p>
<p>Syllables with syllabic consonants and no vowel are never
stressed or counted when determining which syllables to stress
(see <a href="s9.html">Section 9</a>).</p>
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The Lojban Reference Grammar
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