Re: 1. YAESR

J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:

>On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 21:13:31 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Joe <joe@...> writes:
>>
>>
>>>[SEMI-SATIRE]
>>>The logical thing to do is to base any spelling reform on the other
>>>languages 'pon this isle. And since Scottish Gaelic isn't what you'd
>>>call easily spelt, Welsh it is.
>>>
>>>
>>Hihi! :-)
>>
>>
>
>A very consistent approach! I never got closer to Welsh spelling than the
>letter _y_.
>
>
>
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), as well as 'Tsieina'(China)).
I had some trouble with final [tS], however.  'Tsh' seemed the best I
could do, in the circumstances. And <z> is a letter so alien to Welsh
that I decided to avoid it. (It's almost non-phonemic in English anyway).

And I did make some adaptations.  In real Welsh, of course, <y> refers
to both [@](obscure) and [1](clear, in North Wales, it's [i] in South
Wales), depending on where it lies in the word.  Due to English stress
patterns, and the fact that it puts schwas wherever the hell it feels
like, I decided to drop the 'clear' pronunciation, removing it entirely
to <u>, and turning into [I] to match the English phonology.  Apart from
that, I'd say that it's pretty faithful.

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