Re: reformed Welsh Spelling - comments?

On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 03:32 AM, Morgan Palaeo Associates
wrote:

> Robert Jung wrote:
>
>> The following is a document called 'Reformed Welsh Spelling' that I
>> just developed. As I find Welsh > spelling a bit difficult and
>> puzzling,
Better stay clear of Gaelic (both Irish and Scots) then   :)
>> I decided to make it phonemic.
>
> Don't you mean "_more_ phonemic"?
One would hope so.  But in fact  the so-called 'Reformed Welsh
Spelling' makes it *less* phonemic than it is at present.   As current
Welsh spelling is fairly phonemic anyway, with the exceptions easily
learnt, I don't see the point of a reform, particular one that moves away
from phonemic representation.

>
>> old spelling=new spelling
>>
>> c=k
>
> Why? It may be slightly easier for English speakers to read, but a lot
> of k's make a text look awfully harsh, to my mind (spiky letters tend
> to do that). And Welsh has a lot of /k/'s.
Yep - in fact medieval Welsh had a lot of Ks in its spelling.  The
adoption of
consistent use of |c| = /k/ was simply because printers fonts at the time
didn't
have enough Ks!!

But the idea was to have one symbol for one phoneme.  It doesn't exactly
take
long to learn |c| = /k/.  It makes welsh no more "difficult" to read than
Quenya
or Sindarin.
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On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 03:09 AM, Robert Jung wrote:
[snip]
> old spelling=new spelling
>
> a=short a, long aa
Presumably where [a:] is not phonemic |a| is still written, or is
|a| only equal to /a/?  this is not clear.

> ae/ai=ai
But there aren't pronounced the same by all Welsh speakers.  The
new spelling is conflating two different diphthongs. While some
speakers, especially those whose Welsh is L2 may pronounce the two
the same, it's going be a tad difficult to persuade those who
pronounce them differently that it's a reform to write them both the
same way.

> au=au
In view of the other changes this might suggest [aw]; in fact it's
[a1] in the north and [ai] in the south.

[snip]
> c=k
> ch=x
Surely, to any non-linguist |x| suggests [ks]?  I can't think of any
natlangs that use the Roman alphabet which write [X] as |x|. But I can
think of some that write |ch|.

> e[short]=e
> e[long]/ei/ey=ei
Ach y fi!  Even anglophones don't normally pronounce all these the same!

Welsh long 'e' is *always* [e:]. i.e. a pure vowel.  Indeed, in the
angliziced
regions of south Wales, where I lived for 22 years, the standard English
/ej/
is pronounced [e:] (as it is in some other parts of Britain also).

Welsh |ei| is pronounced [@i], and |ey| is either [@i] or [@1] according to
region.

> eu=eu
Even though its pronounced the same as |ey| which is going to be written
as "ei"
- odd in a spelling that is meant to be 'phonemic'.

[snip]
> ff/ph=f
Thereby removing a useful distinction between spirant mutation of /p/ (ph)
  and
the /f/ sound that is never mutated.  Beginners generally find the initial
mutations far more difficult than the spelling.  It would have thought any
aid
in helping to spot a mutated or non-mutated sound was useful.

> g=g
> gw=/g/ g, /gw/ gw
Eh? When is |gw| ever /g/?

The word 'gwlad' is is [g_wla:d] which is phonemically /gwlad/,
the soft mutation being 'wlad' [wla:d] /wlad/.

[snip]

> j=dj
Why?  |j| occurs only in borrowings from English. What advantage is gained
from introducing an unnecessary digraph?  What would |j| represent?

[snip]
> oe/oi/oy=oi
There are not all pronounce the same in all regions of Wales!!  This would
be a 'reform' towards less phonemic representation.

> ow=ow
pronounced [@w]

[snip]
> si[before a/e/o]=c
Wow! How many natlang have |c| = [S]? And in the north the pronunciation
[sj] still persists in some areas AFAIK.

> ts=tc
?? A bit inconsistent here, methinks.

> u/y[clear]=short u, long uu (pronunciation depends on region)
> uw=uw
> w=/V/ û, /u/ ûû, /w/ w
Eh??  The "new spelling" confuses what is pretty clear in the current
spelling!

|u| and 'clear' |y| = [1(:)] in north Wales and [i] in south Wales.
'obscure' |y| is [V]
|w| as a vowel is *always* [u(:)] and as a semivowel is [w].

I notice there is no corresponding proposal to distinguish between
|i| as a vowel and |i| as a semivowel.

> wy=wi /wi/ (rising), ui /uj/ (falling)
Only a problem after |g|

> *Regular stress falls on the next-to-last syllable; irregular stress is
> marked with an acute accent.
Often done.

> **Vowel combinations ia, ie, io are pronounced /ja/, /je/, and /jo/,
> unless the first i is marked with an umlaut,
diaeresis, actually.

> thus ïa, ïe, ïo, and the combination is /i/ + /a e o/.
But this is what Welsh does already.
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Personally, I don't see the point of tinkering around with a more or less
phonemic spelling - certainly not to make it less phonemic.

If ever a spelling cried out for a more phonemic approach it's English!
But I don't see what this has got to do with conlanging.

Ray
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