[Spellyans] Phonemic inventory

[Craig Weatherhill]

I always use the West Penwith pronunciation of <da> "good".  Not as the 
Welsh (which is how most Cornish users pronounce the word), but with the 
a spoken like the ai of "fair".  This was its pronunciation in Sennen 
Cove and a fisherman's chart from the 1930s, written phonetically, shows 
"Pullan Day" for a sheltered area of water now shown as Pollen Da.  I 
believe that this was how the late Cecil Roberts used to pronounce it, too.

Craig


Michael Everson wrote:
> Is schwa a phoneme? When in §1.2 I introduce the 
> phonemes, do I write /@/ or [@]? I guess we have 
> a minimal pair in <dâ> [dæ:] 'good', <da> [d@] 
> 'to'.
>
> We've written our phoneme corresponding to <a> as 
> /æ/ because the pronunciation is long [æ:] short 
> [æ]. We have written [ha] for <ha> 'and' however. 
> Ought we?
>