Wallops #4: Freddy Germanos article no. 2

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>]

Sorry I took so long to catch this one; as a picker of nits, I feel shame
at missing this so long.

Nick.  Buddy.  Come close to the screen.  Look close.  Watch the sentence,
and tell me what's wrong.  You wrote:

>ni'o mi fonta'a la ringos.star. ca le purlamdei .i ra carmi xalbo .i puzi
>citka lo kruji gi'e pu'i bredi lenu se vitke lei pu sonci pe la .elalaMEIN.
>zi'enoi djica lenu zanrysku lenu la ringos. virnu

What's wrong with this picture?  Could it be that ".elalaMEIN." isn't a
valid cmene?  Probably.  Not one, but two illegal syllables, even by the
less restrictive, newer rules.

Side point:  This is actually arguable, since it's reasonable to assert
that the word syllablizes into "el-al-am-ein" or some such, thus avoiding
the "la" syllable, but I fear such shenanigans aren't recognized by Lojban.

I'm not doing this (just) to humiliate Nick in public; he's one of the best
we've got.  But even he blows this one.  If you ask me, the "la/lai/doi"
will be one of the first things to go once the baseline is lifted.  It's
just too damn easy to miss it.  I'd be tempted to advocate losing the
restriction altogether and universally requiring pauses before, as well as
after, cmene, but I think that'd be a pain to pronounce.

~mark (shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu)