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

On Sun, Jan 23, 2005 at 04:22:28PM -0000, Michael Poxon wrote:
> I think you'll find North Walian has three y's - /@/ ,  /i/ and the
> distictive Northern Welsh sound (represented in IPA by a barred lower-case
> i)
and in CXS by [1], which is what Ray said.  (At least I think it was Ray;
you didn't indicate whom you were quoting.)  So you two would seem to be
almost in agreement, except that he said that [i] and [1] were the same
vowel as spoken in different parts of the country (hence perhaps
realizations of a single underlying phoneme /1/), while you seem to be
claiming that they can coexist within a single 'lect.

> If you watch the mouth of a speaker producing this sound, the tongue
> comes between the teeth and it looks for all the world like what you're
> going to get is a /T/!
Heh.

> Mind you, the plethora of y's is one reason why I'm not that keen on Welsh
> orthography.
I find it pretty but counterintuitive.  Things like |u| for /i/ and
vocalic |w| are just freakin' weird. :)

-Marcos