Muai - Patterns - Word-Break Detectability

If correctly pronounced and heard, it is always possible to know when all words begin and when they end, even if they are pronounced without pauses between them. That is possible because Muai words follow some phonetic patterns. In order to present those patterns, let us define some phoneme representation conventions:

• C : any consonant {k, t, p, h, s, f, l, m, n }
• N : a nasal vowel {m, n, N} whose proper pronunciation usually depends on the subsequent phoneme (they are homorganic)
• V : any vowel {a, e, i, o, u}
• A : an open vowel {a, e, o}
• U : a close vowel {u, i}

So, we have the following correspondence between word structure and word class, where curly brackets "{}" show multiple possibilities separated by commas and hyphen "-" separate morphemes (usually stem/root from desinence/suffix):

• CAU : a specifier (mai, nou, fai, etc.)
• CUAU : a pronoun (kioi, tiei, suai, etc.)
• CAC-AU : a quantifier (munai, ninai, etc.)
• {CANC, CUAC, CUANC}-{V, AU, UAU} : a noun or a verb (tinti, tenku, tenkau, tenkiau, etc.)
• CV{CANC, CUAC, CUANC}-{V, AU, UAU} : a noun or a verb pertaining to a group (fukuaki, nafiemau, salinkiau, etc.)
• CV-CUAU : a pronoun referent to a noun pertaining to a group (letuai, holiai, etc.)

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