Dorothy Milne: Fonts with buailte characters (was: Irish Lenition & Orthographic Depth)

[Elizabeth J. Pyatt]

From: Dorothy Milne <dmilne at morgan.ucs.mun.ca>
To: The Celtic Linguistics List <CELTLING at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Subject: Re: Cecil Ward: Fonts with buailte characters (was: Irish Lenition &



hello Cecil


>>  We can all agree that it is not the case that the choice between
>>  postposed h's and superscript dots is more "phonetic".

         perhaps not more, but also not less ...


>>  And would this not in fact *reduce* the correspondence between sound
>>  and symbol if dots were used for initial lenition, but not for
>>  word-internal lenited consonants.
>
         i was under the impression it would be used for
         word-internal lenited consonants as well ...
         wasn't it that way in the past ? ... i don't have
         a text in the old script to check to see..
>
>>  And what about words that have a
>>  permanently lenited initial? These are not "the result of a mutation"
>>  in the mind of the native speaker. Imagine if I were to write "tall"
>>  (Scottish Gaelic), with superscript dot on the t, for "thall"?
>
         yes .. and that's how it was done in the past ...


      I think the question is, is  'b with a dot' a more easily read
      symbol to represent  /w/ or /v/  that 'bh' ... wherever
      it appears in an Irish word ...


>>  I presume that we would still have digraphs for nasalization, so in
>>  that case we would a confusing mix of different strategies.

>>
>>  This idea seems to throw up so many problems...

    The method that is being suggested for study is in fact
    the method that was used for generations ... up till the
    script reform in the 1960's.

    The older generation of readers make the claim that that
    system was easier to read than the current system of using
    'h''s.

    It should be pointed out that the system with 'h's also
    goes back to the 17th century, perhaps even earlier...

          le meas,  Doireann

--
o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

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