Re: YAEPT:Re: Phonological musings (was: Announcement: New auxlang "Choton")

Ray Brown wrote:

> On Tuesday, October 5, 2004, at 08:54 , Roger Mills wrote:
>
>> Joe wrote:
>>
>>> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>>>
>>>> PS A similar oddity is his use of "were" as an example of Elvish 'e',
>>>> which
>>>> otherwise seem to be monophthongal - the RPoid English I learnt has
>>>> [we@
>>>> ]
>>>> for
>>>> "were". I suppose Tolkien's 'lect differed here; dialectal variation
>>>> 'tween
>>>> [we:] and [we@] is, of course, easily believable.
>>
>>
>> Is Elvish "e" supposed to be [e] or [E]? (Or both, depending...?)
>
>
> I am certain the problem is a typo in Andreas' original message. It is
> surely "where", not "were" that JJRT wrote.
No, the text actually reads:
# VOWELS
# For vowels the letters i, e, a, o, u are used, and (in
# Sindarin only) y. As far as can be determined the sounds
# represented by these letters (other than y) were of
# normal kind, though doubtless many local varieties
# escape detection.0 That is, the sounds were
# approximately those represented by i, e, a, o, h in
# English machine, were, father, for, brute, irrespective
# of quantity. In Sindarin long e, a, o had the same
# quality as the short vowels, being derived in
# comparatively recent times from them (older é, á, ó had
# been changed). In Quenya long ê and ó were, when
# correctly pronounced, as by the Eldar, tenser and
# 'closer' than the short vowels.

Maybe Tolkien or his typesetter made a typo that was
never caught, but see John's earlier post.
(Still it's strange if JRRT didn't know his pronunciation
was a minority one!)
--

/BP 8^)
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

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