[Spellyans] emendations to the SWF

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Thu Dec 11 14:39:51 GMT 2008


On 11 Dec 2008, at 13:41, nicholas williams wrote:

> Emendations to the SWF specification.
> 4 says budhi ~ beudhi is to become beudhi only.

This makes no sense at all. The attested forms are buthy (BM,  
Tregear), bethy (CW), bidhyz (Lhuyd).
Kennedy's dictionary gives bedhi/bidhi, ppl bidhez
Gendall gives bidhi

The rules we have are that there are alternations <eu> /ø/~/e/ and  
<u> /y/~/i/
It seems to me that the evidence suggests <budhi> (<budhy>) to be the  
correct form.

<beudhi> is attested in KK only, because Breton has <beuziñ>.

Similarly, the only evidence for <uth> 'horror' being <euth> is  
George's KK, which cites Breton <euth>.

And Breton is not Cornish.

The modern Breton form is <euzh>. Indeed all the attested forms I find  
for Breton are in <euz>: euzic 1499, euzus 1716, eûzi 1821 (Deshayes  
2003). Do we trust George's dictionary? (Perhaps <euth> occurs in a  
gloss. I don't know. I doubt.)

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com





More information about the Spellyans mailing list