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Re: German Spelling Reform (fwd)

From:Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>
Date:Friday, August 13, 1999, 18:17
On Fri, 13 Aug 1999, andrew wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, FFlores wrote: > > > I think Brithenig has /w/ > /gw/ initially... Or was it Kernu? > > Andrew, Padraic, am I right? Why did you decide to have that change? > > > Yes, both Brithenig and Kernu has /gw/ initially. It is a sound change > that occurred among the Brythonic languages. In Brithenig latin v has > the value /w/ rather than change to /v/. /v/ only occurs in mutations as > an initial letter. A later sound change makes initial /w/ become /gw/ as > happens in the continental Romance languages. This sound change is more > widely applied in Brithenig than them and it is subject to the same rules > of mutation as /g/.
Most words in Kernu that start with gu, gw are pronounced /w/; u, v or w are /v/ or rarely /w/. The gw cluster is a remnant from days of Brithenig influence on native orthography and pronunciation, and are found quite frequently in borrowings. Common people, especially in the West, continued to say /w/ or /v/ unashamedly. Its use is (halfheartedly) discouraged anymore, and so persists and sometimes hypercorrects (gwoulps /'gwujps/ for voulps (fox) or gwarru /gwar'u/ for varru (chappie, lad)). This is surely a Bad Thing, and more than one school boy has been whacked for it; but no one seems to be able to do much about it. So the woman's name Guimier, contrary to the evidence, is pronounced /'wEmjER/ (where R is no trill r: -er -eor and -oer groups seem to be losing the trilled r, even when accented, like verbal infinitives: carer /kar'eR/).
> The Glossarium Damnonum Linguae shows that Kernu has some words that > begin with v /v/ normally. In Brithenig the only words that begin with > f /v/ are borrowings, such as: fodka, vodka.
It also shows a large number of words starting in w, most of which are pronounced /v/: wenir /vEn'ir/ (come). The name Wergils, though, is regularly /'werzhis/. Same goes for a large number of other Classical names. Of course there are legions of naughty school boys as say /gwEn'Ir/ as well... Padraic.
> > > > - andrew. > -- > Andrew Smith, Intheologus hobbit@earthlight.co.nz > > Jesus is working out his salvation; he is about halfway there. >