Syllables
From Ial
A syllable may begin with a vowel, diphthong or with any single consonant, or with a consonant followed by l.
L is a liquid consonant, where liquid means articulated without friction. Because of that, the l can be prolonged like a vowel. Another common liquid consonant is r, but that has been discarded because of its difficulty of pronunciation for too a many speakers.
TODO: if you find the cluster consonant+liquid+vowel difficult to pronounce, please let me know. Try to say pla, tla, kla, sla, amla, anla.
A syllable may end in a vowel or diphthong, or a nasal consonant (m, n, both produced through the nose with the mouth closed). No other kinds of consonants are allowed at the end of a syllable, because they are not easy to pronounce for all speakers, especially if they happen to be at the end of a word. A syllable must have at least one vowel, because otherwise pronunciation is almost impossible. This is also true in much more phonetically-complex natural languages :)
Sequences of more than two vowels in a row (e.g. miau) cannot occur as well as all kinds of consonant clusters: they both may be difficult to pronounce for some speakers, especially couplings like pt, ks (an x sound), or even sts. We ban all consonants pair and triplets, not only in a syllable, but also between syllables, except for the liquid consonant l which may follow any other consonant. No consonant gemination occurs (e.g. there can be no double consonants that must be prolonged, because many speakers find it difficult).
Despite having excluded all troublesome phonemes combinations, the allowed ones are sufficient to produce 180 different syllables.
Natural languages can have a lot more syllables, but the cost is loosing ease of pronunciation and they do not take advantage of but a few combinations. Anyway, care must be taken in choosing words. E.g. very similar words (whether one-syllable words or longer)should not be used for related meanings, since doing so increases the probability of misunderstanding if there should be a typographical error in a piece of text or a loud bit of background noise during a conversation.
[edit] One-syllable words
This is a list of all possible monosyllabic morphemes:
15 syllables beginning with a vowel: a am an ai aim ain au aum aun i im in u um un
7*15=105 syllables beginning with only one consonant: any of the first group prefixed with any of p,t,k,s,l,m,n
4*15=60 syllables beginning with two consonants: any of the first group prefixed with p,t,k,s + l
Note mla, nla cannot be found at the beginning of a word/syllable, only in separate syllables: (any vowel here)m-la, (any vowel here)n-la.
A list of all the possible syllables is available.
