<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">David,<DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>The sound is definitely two syllables, much different from the sound of a long vowel. </DIV><DIV>John</DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Nov 25, 2006, at 3:20 PM, David Wright wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006">Estimado John:</SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006"></SPAN></FONT> </DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006">Thanks for your input. I have one doubt:</SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006"></SPAN></FONT> </DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006"> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006">Does the lack of vowel ellision in your examples produce a result that sounds different from long vowels, perhaps a syllable boundary between the two like vowels, distinguished by stress? I suppose this would be harder to hear in the last example.</SPAN></FONT></DIV></SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006"></SPAN></FONT> </DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006">Saludos,</SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006"></SPAN></FONT> </DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006">David</SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006"></SPAN></FONT> </DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2"><SPAN class="312044420-25112006">******************************</SPAN></FONT></DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Arial" size="2">Listeros,</FONT></DIV> <DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="WHITE-SPACE: pre"></SPAN><FONT face="Arial" size="2">The use of the double vowel to represent length can be confusing for variants that tend not to eliminate one of two vowels that come together at a morpheme boundary. In Huastecan Nahuatl we have, for example, niitztoc (ni-itztoc), "I am [estar]"; quiittah " (qui-ittah), "they see him-her-it"; mooholinia (mo-oholinia), "it moves".</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Arial" size="2">John</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>