The Complete Lojban Language
symbols within square brackets.) Technically, it is sufficient to capitalize the vowel letter, in this case O, but it is easier on the reader to capitalize the whole syllable.
Without the capitalization, the ordinary rules of Lojban stress would cause the se syllable to be stressed. Lojbanized names are meant to represent the pronunciation of names from other languages with as little distortion as may be; as such, they are exempt from many of the regular rules of Lojban phonology, as will appear in the rest of this chapter.
3.2 Basic Phonetics
Lojban pronunciations are defined using the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, a standard method of transcribing pronunciations. By convention, IPA transcriptions are always within square brackets: for example, the word “cat” is pronounced (in General American pronunciation) [kæt]. Section 3.10 (p. 44) contains a brief explanation of the IPA characters used in this chapter, with their nearest analogues in English, and will be especially useful to those not familiar with the technical terms used in describing speech sounds.
The standard pronunciations and permitted variants of the Lojban letters are listed in the table below. The descriptions have deliberately been made a bit ambiguous to cover variations in pronunciation by speakers of different native languages and dialects. In all cases except r the first IPA symbol shown represents the preferred pronunciation; for r, all of the variations (and any other rhotic sound) are equally acceptable.
| Letter | IPA | X-SAMPA | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ' | [h] | [h] | an unvoiced glottal spirant |
| , | - | - | the syllable separator |
| . | [ʔ] | [?] | a glottal stop or a pause |
| a | [a], [ɑ] | [a], [A] | an open vowel |
| b | [b] | [b] | a voiced bilabial stop |
| c | [ʃ], [ʂ] | [S], [s`] | an unvoiced coronal sibilant |
| d | [d] | [d] | a voiced dental/alveolar stop |
| e | [ɛ], [e] | [E], [e] | a front mid vowel |
| f | [f], [ɸ] | [f], [p\] | an unvoiced labial fricative |
| g | [ɡ] | [g] | a voiced velar stop |
| i | [i] | [i] | a front close vowel |
| j | [ʒ], [ʐ] | [Z], [z`] | a voiced coronal sibilant |
| k | [k] | [k] | an unvoiced velar stop |
| l | [l], [l̩] | [l], [l=] | a voiced lateral approximant (may be syllabic) |
| m | [m], [m̩] | [m], [m=] | a voiced bilabial nasal (may be syllabic) |
| n | [n], [n̩], [ŋ], [ŋ̍] | [n], [n=], [N], [N=] | a voiced dental or velar nasal (may be syllabic) |
| o | [o], [ɔ] | [o], [O] | a back mid vowel |
| p | [p] | [p] | an unvoiced bilabial stop |
| r | [r], [ɹ], [ɾ], [ʀ], [r̩], [ɹ̩], [ɾ̩], [ʀ̩] | [r], [r\], [4], [R\], [r=], [r\=],[4=], [R\=] | a rhotic sound |
| s | [s] | [s] | an unvoiced alveolar sibilant |
| t | [t] | [t] | an unvoiced dental/alveolar stop |
| u | [u] | [u] | a back close vowel |
| v | [v], [β] | [v], [B] | a voiced labial fricative |
| x | [x] | [x] | an unvoiced velar fricative |
| y | [ə] | [@] | a central mid vowel |
| z | [z] | [z] | a voiced alveolar sibilant |
