Re: reformed Welsh Spelling - comments?

On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 07:38 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
[snip]
>
>> [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|.
>
> Assuming that's meant to be [x],
False assumption.  I wrote and meant [X].

It's a voiceless _uvular_ fricative (tho the velar pronunciation is often
used by anglophones).
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On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 02:04 PM, michael poxon wrote:

> I realise the temptation. Welsh sounds so beautiful but looks awful. Too
> many f's (I hate f) and y's. But you can blame English typesetters for
> that.
Eh?  Evidence?

> I'd like to see [dd] replaced by [dh], [ff] replaced by [f] and [f] by [v]
> .
Rather cosmetic changes.

> Also the grapheme [y] does duty for several sounds.
Two, in fact:
1. 'obscure y' =  [V]
2. 'clear y' = [1] in north Wales and [i] in south Wales (i.e. dialect
variation).

The rules for which |y| is obscure & which clear are simple & the
exceptions easily learnt.
But if one wanted reform, then the obvious thing would be to spell 'clear
y' as |u|.
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On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 11:11 PM, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:

> --- Robert Jung <RobertMJung@...> 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/.
In final syllable of polysyllabic words and in _some_ monosyllabic
words it's [1] in north Wales and [i] in the south.

>> I call it an umlaut, not a diaeresis. I like
>> 'umlaut' better - it sounds more exotic. :) And
>> aren't they the same thing anyway?
>
> Yes and no.
Nope.

> 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.

> 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. The
double dots are used in Welsh to denote diaeresis.

Welsh does have umlaut; indeed, it had both a-umlaut and
i-umlaut.  But neither of these phonological phenomena are
shown by using diacritics; it's shown in the spelling.
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On Thursday, December 4, 2003, at 05:27 AM, John Cowan wrote:

> Nik Taylor scripsit:
>> Stephen Mulraney wrote:
>>> Welsh looks like nothing else on earth, and looks as beautiful as it
>>> sounds, too.
>>
>> Welsh may look like nothing else on Earth,
>
> Actually, it looks very much like Brithenig, not too surprisingly.
Not surprising indeed   :)

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.

Ray
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