John Woldemar Cowan

“ Weak stress is the lowest level, so it really means no stress at all. Weak stress is required for syllables containing “y”, a syllabic consonant, or a buffer vowel.
Primary stress is required on the penultimate syllable of Lojban content words (called “brivla”) . Lojbanized names may be stressed on any syllable, but if a syllable other than the penultimate is stressed, the syllable (or at least its vowel) must be capitalized in writing. Lojban structural words (called “cmavo”) may be stressed on any syllable or none at all. ”

“ In Lojban, these are considered two consonant sounds spoken together without an intervening vowel sound, and so are represented in Lojban by the two separate consonants: “tc” (IPA [tʃ] ) and “dj” (IPA [dʒ] ) . In general, whether a complex sound is considered one sound or two depends on the language: Russian views “ts” as a single sound, whereas English, French, and Lojban consider it to be a consonant cluster.
The Special Lojban Characters The apostrophe, period, and comma need special attention. ”

“ Diphthongs always constitute a single syllable.
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. ”

“ Single consonant sounds are isolated by word boundaries or by intervening vowel sounds from other consonant sounds. Doubled consonant sounds are either lengthened like [s] in English “hiss”, or repeated like [k] in English “backcourt”. Consonant clusters consist of two or more single or doubled consonant sounds in a group, each of which is different from its immediate neighbor. In Lojban, doubled consonants are excluded altogether, and clusters are limited to two or three members, except in Lojbanized names. ”

“ There exists an alternative orthography for Lojban, which is designed to be as compatible as possible (but no more so) with the orthography used in pre-Lojban versions of Loglan. The consonants undergo no change, except that “x” is replaced by “h”. The individual vowels likewise remain unchanged. However, the vowel pairs and diphthongs are changed as follows:
“ai”, “ei”, “oi”, “au” become “ai”, “ei”, “oi”, “ao”. “ia” through “iu” and “ua” through “uu” remain unchanged. “a'i”, “e'i”, “o'i” and “a'o” become “a,i”, “e,i”, “o,i” and “a,o”. ”

“ Secondary stress can be used for contrast, or for emphasis of a point. Secondary stress can be emphasized at any level up to primary stress, although the speaker must not allow a false primary stress in brivla, since errors in word resolution could result.
The following are Lojban words with stress explicitly shown:
9.6) dikyjvo DI,ky,jvo (In a fully-buffered dialect, the pronunciation would be: ['di kə ʒɪ vo] .) Note that the syllable “ky” is not counted in determining stress. The vowel “y” is never stressed in a normal Lojban context. ”

“ In addition, some attention is given to the Received Pronunciation of (British) English. These two dialects are referred to as GA and RP respectively. Speakers of other dialects should consult a book on phonetics or their local television sets.
[ˈ] An IPA indicator of primary stress; the syllable which follows [ˈ] receives primary stress. [ʔ] An allowed variant of Lojban “.”. This sound is not usually considered part of English. It is the catch in your throat that sometimes occurs prior to the beginning of a word (and sometimes a syllable) which starts with a vowel. ”

“ The preferred pronunciation of Lojban “v”. As in English “voice”, “savor”, or “live”. [w] Used in Lojban diphthongs beginning or ending with “u”. Like the “w” in English “wet” [wɛt] or “cow” [kɑw] . [x] The preferred pronunciation of Lojban “x”. Not normally an English sound, but used in some pronunciations of “loch” and “Bach”; “gh” in Scots “might” and “night”. The German “Ach-Laut”. To pronounce [x] , force air through your throat without vibrating your vocal chords; there should be lots of scrape. [ʏ] A possible Lojban buffer vowel. Not an English sound: the “ü” of German “hübsch”. ”

“ The convenience of the listener should be regarded as paramount in deciding to use a substitute for [h] .
The period represents a mandatory pause, with no specified length; a glottal stop (IPA [ʔ] ) is considered a pause of shortest length. ”

“ It was designed to aid in a planned rapprochement between the Logical Language Group and The Loglan Institute, a group headed by James Cooke Brown. The rapprochement never took place. There also exists a Cyrillic orthography for Lojban which was designed when the introductory Lojban brochure was translated into Russian. ”