> It's been brought to my attention that some
> languages, e.g., Turkish, have no "hiatus." Thus
> one Turkish vowel cannot be directly followed
> by another vowel inside a word without an
> inserted consonant or glide of some kind.
>
> English may have hiatus, but maybe not all speakers.
> Given the tendency of English vowels to diphthongize,
> the common insert will be a [w] or [y] of some sort.
> Thus for many "poet' will be [po(w)et] and "leo" may
> become [li(y)o]. If -a- is the first element, the chance
> of hiatus rises, but some may put in a glottal stop.
>
> An [h] is another possibility, even [r] in some dialects.
> And some insertions may even go across word
> boundaries. Kennedy was ridiculed as calling
> Cuba "Cuber" [kju.b@r] -- but what he was doing
> took place only when another vowel followed.
> Thus his "..Cuba can..." would not have the intrusive
> [r] but his "..Cuba is..." would have it.
>
> Is it considered that English has hiatus? My works
> on languages often seem to ignore the issue. Is
> there any list of those langauges that do not allow
> hiatus? I presume all the Turkic languages fall in
> that category, but it seems assured that there will
> be others.
>
> Many languages do seem to have hiatus, but I have
> no idea how many. It seems to exist in many words
> in Spanish, for example, though in other words
> diphthongization takes place. Hiatus is a major feature
> of Esperanto, where following vowels are always
> kept separate -- even "au." However, I have never
> heard the idea challenged as such. Other projects, if
> I recall correctly, did modify the Eo. rule, but this
> seemed to be done to make the result "more natural,"
> not necessarily easier to pronounce.
>
> Many artlangs are rich in vowels. Whether they
> have hiatus is often not addressed. Many artlangs
> do seem to have it. Tolkien seems to have used
> it, Ursula Le Guin as well. Some people seem
> to count languages with it as "more musical." I do
> not note it in Klingon.
>
> Hiatus is common in many Pacific languages,
> where it often contrasts with the glottal stop. But
> spellings do not always tell the story. How many
> of the scores of languages listed by Mark with "dua"
> for "two" (
http://zompist.com/numbers.shtml )
> actually pronounce it as two syllables?
>
> Indonesian "sosiologi" clearly has five syllables:
> [so.si.o.lo.gi] with hiatus between i and o.
>
>
> Best regards to all, LEO
>
> ############
> Leo J. Moser
> ############