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

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> On Sun, Jan 23, 2005 at 01:42:59PM +0100, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
> >
>
> JMW> Of the many different uses of the letter |y|, I like best that Welsh
> use,
> JMW> since the other uses of |y| can be represented with other letters, but
> JMW> there's no other letter for that one.
>
> AJ> Needless to say, I, as a Swede, disagree; |y| is, as even the IPA
> accepts,
> AJ>  to be used for /y/! This moreover is the original use of the letter.
>
> RB> Yes it was, but I assume you would not use the same argument for |c| =
> /k/
> RB>   and |v| = /w/   ;)
>
> AJ> You assume to much. I'm quite inclined to think of /k/ as the
> AJ> default reading of |c|, and as for |v|, if I'm not mistaken, by the
> AJ> time it was accepted as a letter separate from |u|, the Latin
> AJ> consonant was generally pronounced as [v].
>
> Yes, it certainly was, since the separation of I/J and U/V was a very
> late development.  Medieval IIRC.  Whereas the |v| = [v] change had
> happened earlier, triggering the adoption of the digraph |vv|,
> which eventually became |w|, for [w] in new borrowings.  But |y| was no
> longer [y] by that point, either.  If you're going to base things on
> "original use", you have to be consistent about what you consider
> "original".
How am I being inconsistent? By the original use of |y|, I mean the use |y| had
when it was introduced in the Latin alphabet. By the original use of |v|, I
mean the use |v| had when it was introduced as a separate letter in the Latin
alphabet (16th C, IIRC).


Now, I'm of course not trying to tell anyone how they should or should not use
these letters. If you want to use |k| for [y~], that's your problem! :)

ObTangentially, I once sketched an alien conlang which used (in romanization)
|c| for a front vowel, IIRC /E/.

                                                         Andreas

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