LL-L "Orthography" 2008.12.23 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 23 December 2008 - Volume 04
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.12.22 (10) [E]

> > From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Orthography

> Italian and Welsh orthographies are pretty close to be phonemically
> based, but then have flaws also.
>
> Welsh orthography does not distinguish long and short "y" (the long
> version being written with a circumflex in better older dictionaries
> and textbooks).

I wouldn't call the Welsh thing a flaw, at least not with respect to
modern Welsh.

Rather, it follows the change in pronunciation when the regular stress
(stress is regularly on the penultimate syllable in Welsh) is displaced
due to the addition of a suffix.

The <y> in Welsh (southern Welsh as I'm familiar with it) is
pronounced /I/ when unstressed but /A/ when stressed (I need to set up
something to do IPA instead of falling back on SAMPA in this day and
age!), so for example, when we pluralise "mynydd" /'mAnID/ (mountain) we
get "mynyddion" /mIn'ADjon/.

So although the <y> represents two sounds it's entirely predictable
because the stress is predictable. And yet there's no changing of the
spelling of the root, which I think is quite neat.

In Welsh the circumflex is used when the stress falls on a syllable
other than the penultimate, to mark the stressed syllable. This is rare
and tends to happen in compound words where phrasal stress is used
rather than lexical stress, eg, "cwm bran" > (the town of) "Cwmbrân".

Y-circumflex is a different thing, where a few common words such as
"ty^" (house) have a different pronunciation (where I used to live, /i/)
and are thusly marked.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/
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