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on 3/5/02 12:43 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: Do ya? (sorry ? I couldn't help it) > Unless there is a great need for such > triphthongs, I would avoid them. Just in an occasional loan word, like hawa (Arabic for air) or, come to think of it, how about 'jawa' for coffee from 'Java'? > > BTW, are vowel combinations other than the defined diphthongs and > triphthongs forbidden? If not, then we could simply specify that > combinations like <uia> and <iua> are two syllables, and that the > default is that the second and third elements form a diphthong. Then, > if a loan required something like /ui a/ or /iu e/, an apostrophe > could be used to separate the syllables, without necessarily implying > a glottal stop. I don't know, but I have a feeling that Malay and Japanese will yield words with -awa and -ayo and such in them. > > Of course, its much simpler to just stick to the defined diphthongs > and triphthongs. It will make pronunciation easier, and it shouldn't > interfere too much with bringing in loans. Since morphemes can't begin > with vowels, no odd vowel sequences should arise from compounding. Quite right. And since these emails are passing each other slowly, I'll say here that I've decided the most sensible thing is to go with the y&w, which, as John said, leave no room for confusion. As far as contrasting ai and ay, the only reason to have ai would be because it's from a loan word, and in that case we'd just borrow it as ay. Say, English 'pain' is borrowed as 'payn.' -- >PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: rmay@hidden.email > Rex F. May (Baloo) > Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp > Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/gdummy.htm > Language site at: http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Uploadexp.htm >Discuss my auxiliary language at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txeqli/