Find words start with consonants that near to each other

Question

I am trying to write a regular expression that finds words starting with consonants that are near to each other.

Here is what I come up with:

\b[^aeiou0-9\W][a-z]+\s[^aeiou0-9\W][a-z]+\b

but the issue is that I need to check before and after word.

For example:

Vowels and consonants are sounds, not letters. Depending on your accent and how thinly you slice them, there are about 20 vowels and 24 consonants.

Result:

how thinly 
you slice 

Expected result:

how thinly
thinly you 
you slice 

Answer 1

\b([^aeiou0-9\W][a-z]+)\s(?=([^aeiou0-9\W][a-z]+))

Example: https://regex101.com/r/tSblEq/1

This is based off of the rules in your pattern. Instead of matching <word><space><word> directly, it's matching <word><space><lookahead word>. It's then grouping the <word> and the <lookahead word> into groups 1 & 2 respectively.

Because the lookahead doesn't consume the characters, each word is evaluated individually for a following word.

Result:

Match 1 Group 1: how
Match 1 Group 2: thinly

Match 2 Group 1: thinly
Match 2 Group 2: you

Match 3 Group 1: you
Match 3 Group 2: slice

Edit to better demonstrate matching directly vs lookahead:

Direct:

how thinly you slice
         ^

The engine is left at the end of the match. 'thinly' cannot be evaluated.

Using lookahead:

how thinly you slice
    ^     

Because the match only consumed "how" and the space after it, the engine is now left at the beginning of the word "thinly".