--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> >> Old |ei| is now |yi| (since |y| is /V/.
> Please
> >> ignore the 'strange' spelling. I know it
> seems
> >> as such, but as long as it works, it's fine
> >> with me.)
> >
> > Y = /V/? That's pretty bizarre!
>
> Bizarre or not, it's what the Welsh actually
> do.
>
> > Isn't it /i/ in Welsh now?
>
> Nope! Most of the time it's /V/.
Well! You live and learn! Is this an /V/ that was
once an /i/?
> In final syllable of polysyllabic words and in
> _some_ monosyllabic
> words it's [1] in north Wales and [i] in the
> south.
OK.
> > There are three words (trema,
> > dieresis and umlaut) that are
> indiscriminately
> > used to mean "two small dots over a vowel" in
> > English.
>
> Unfortunately, this is the case and IME is the
> cause of confusion.
It could be. One can also simply accept the
situation and move on...
> > Each has technical meanings that most
> > people don't give a whit for - best usage is
> > probably trema. None of them are actually
> > incorrect for your purposes, though.
>
> Except that when describing actual phonological
> phenomena
> 'umlaut' and 'diaeresis' have quite different
> meanings.
Quite. In technical circumstances, I see no
reason not to differentiate the three phenomena.
In common parlance, average people do not know
what a trema is - they've never heard the word.
Some know what a dieresis is - but most have
never heard of it. Almost everyone knows that an
umlaut is the two little dots that Germans like
to use over their vowels.
I say, if you want technical, go technical - if
you want undstandability, go for what's
understood!
[snip]
> In the early days I tried to steer Andrew
> towards a 'more continental'
> orthography which would have made it look more
> like Breton or the Kemmyn
> variety of Cornish, but Andrew stuck with his
> Welsh-like orthography.
Well, that was rather the point! Welsh sound
changes - Welsh orthography!
Padraic.
=====
la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu ast meiyoer ke 'l andrext ben trasfu.
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