Re: 1. YAESR

Ray Brown wrote:

> On Monday, April 18, 2005, at 11:00 , Joe wrote:
> [snip]
>
>> Well, Welsh and English have a pleasantly similar phonology, with the
>> odd exception (Welsh doesn't have [tS] or [dZ], or [z], English doesn't
>> have [K] or [r_h], or [x] natively). I spelt [tS] and [dZ] as well as I
>> could, within the Welsh orthography (I didn't make it up, of course.
>> See Welsh 'jwg'(jug) and 'garej'(garage),
>
>
> Yep - nowadays, all but the purists recognized both the letter |j| and
> the
> sound [dZ] as Welsh. The position of [S] is more problematic; in English
> borrowings it is simply |s| if final, e.g. _ffres_ and, of course [tS] is
> even more problematic  :)

Yes.  'sh' shouldn't be a problem, but it's not exactly purist.  But I
think it's a rather ugly diagraph, and so I stuck with 'si' as far as
possible.  Which admittedly only applies in South Wales, I believe, but
you know.

>
> [snip]
>
>>  And <z> is a letter so alien to Welsh
>
>
> Note quite - in south Walian one does occasionally come across _zw^_ (z +
> circumflexed-w) "zoo" for the more standard _sw^_    :)
>
Aye?  I didnae know that.

> [snip]
>
>> to <u>, and turning into [I] to match the English phonology.
>
>
> Which is the way short |i| is pronounced in Welsh, as well as
> English   :)
>
So it is - though I'm thinking to have [i:] represented by î would make
the whole thing look rather busy.

>> Apart from
>> that, I'd say that it's pretty faithful.
>
>
> Um - the diphthongs are a bit out also. For example, being used to actual
> Welsh _beic_ [b@jk] = 'bike' I found it a bit odd for English _bake_
> (which in 'Welsh English' is pronounced [be:k]) - your transcription made
> me read the thing with a London accent   :)

Heh.  Yes, I wasn't too sure about that.  I suppose if you're going to
base an English spelling reform on Welsh, it should be based on the
Welsh English dialect.  I didn't do this, because I'm not dreadfully
experienced in it, whereas I know my own accent inside out.

Anyway.  I had fun with it, and I'm glad everyone else enjoyed it.