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> Then maybe you should drop them. > > > I'm > > thinking it should be xien and xiu, with two distinct syllables, to preclude > > that danger. I think I made the first forms because the origin words, from > > French and Chinese, are listed as monosyllabic, though I have my doubts > > about "chien". It sounds like two syllables to me. > > "chien", "rien", and "bien" are all monosyllabic, > at least in the standard > French dialect I learned in college. The dictionary agrees with you. I think I tend to make two syllables simply because thy /j/ tends to get obscured, which reinforces the idea that they'd better be dispensed with. > Or, better, a few simple rules about which > _kinds_ of phoneme can be combined with > which other kinds of phoneme and in what order. > > E.g.: an initial syllable can begin with any of these: > > C | ZG | SK | ZL | SL | KL | GL > > where Z = voiced fricative, S =unvoiced fricative, > K = unvoiced stop, G = voiced stop, C = any consonant, L = liquid (l or r). > > I would recommend against the combinations like > KS | GZ, or against clustering an affricate > with just about anything else. > I don't find them hard to pronounce, but > lots of people do; and I do sometimes find > them hard to distinguish acoustically from the plain fricatives > without the initial stop when > other people pronounce them. But the same argument applies _a fortiori_ > to the affricates, which seem to be embedded > pretty solidly in ceqli. Easy pronouncability > is obviously not your highest goal, but one to > be balanced with others; it's up to you to say > how much ease of pronunciation you're willing > to give up to achieve other goals (e.g. having many > words with few syllables). > > The rule above needs to be expanded to show > which consonants the semivowels (y, w) are allowed > to follow. You might rule out either of them > following any consonant at roughly the same point > of articulation, i.e. not only sy, xy, cy, zy, jy, ny > but also pw, bw, mw. I'm beginning to think that maybe the following vowel here is more important than the leading consonant. I mean, for me, pwa, pwe, pwi are easy to say and hear, but pwo and pwu are not. In like manner, tho maybe to a lesser degree, I find cya, xya, sya rather better than cye, xye, sye. But not by much, so I'd decide to prohibit c/x/s+y. There. I just decided it. And prohibit at least the combos yi, wo, and wu. How's this list sound for cwaba? B+L, R, W, Y C+W D+L, R, W, Y F+L, R, W, Y G+L, R. W, Y H+L, R J+W K+L, R. W, Y P+L, R. W, Y S+F, K, L, M, N, P, R, T, W T+L, R, W, Y V+L, R, W, Y X+K, L, M, N, P, R, T, V, W Z+B, D, G, L, R, W, Y Oh, and no double anything allowed, vowels or consonants. and for semivowels, it's easier, I think, to list what's prohibited: yi, wu, wo, ow, uw, iy And 2 nasals and liquids in any combination are permitted as long as they're bracketed by vowels. A few n/l pairs are allowed to end a morpheme ? A vowel must go before, but none is needed afterward: RN, RM LN, LM A maximum of three vowels can appear in a cluster, and these combinations are disallowed: OU, EI, UO Does that adequately cover it? I think most of the words I'll have to change are the c/x/s+y one.