Re: aspirated m?

Ray Brown wrote:

> The trouble was we know was that JRRT never finished 'discovering'
> Sindarin or any other of his languages - he was always revising them and
> in those days when everything was papar-based it invevitably meant that
> some older bits hung around unrevised.

Not that that's a bad thing... :)

> BTW do we have any evidence that the Old English spells |hn|, |hl| and
> |hr|
>  did not indicate biphonemic groups, i.e. were pronounced something like
> [Xn], [Xl], {xr]?

At a guess, I'd say a few lines from Beowulf such as
          677 No ic me an herewæsmun hnagran talige,
and
          952 hordweorþunge hnahran rince,
suggest that h- alliterates with hn-, so they must both begin with /h/
(which probably indicates [xn] or the like).

--
Tristan