Re: Y not? (was: Of Haa/hhet & other matters)

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 15:03:18 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

>Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:
>
>> Of the many different uses of the letter |y|, I like best that Welsh use,
>> since the other uses of |y| can be represented with other letters, but
>> there's no other letter for that one.
>
>Needless to say, I, as a Swede, disagree; |y| is, as even the IPA accepts,
>to be used for /y/! This moreover is the original use of the letter.
I classical Greek, and in the educated Roman pronunciation by the time it
was adapted. Most Roman alphabet orthographies, however, used it for /i/
over many centuries, compare e.g. the French name /i grEk/. The German
pronunciation of |y| as /y/ is a 19th century cultism that has caught on in
the prescriptive standard language and hence in many regions, but not in
all, compare e.g. the Swiss mountain "die Mythen" (plurale tantum), that is
pronounced as /'mi:t@n/, and not because the dialects would have unrounded
the front rounded vowels (as is common in many German dialects)!

Do you know how the |y|-pronunciations developed in Scandinavia?

kry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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