[Spellyans] Front unrounded vowels, was: The quantity system

[Michael Everson]

At 23:17 +0100 2008-06-24, nicholas williams wrote:
>And worse still <bys> 'world' is pronounced bizz 
>by ex-KK speakers (e.g. Matthew Clarke). Bizz is 
>an error as is privv for prëv. In order to make 
>it clear that the vowel is different from that 
>in bys 'until', bës is a reasonable compromise.

That's right. The SWF bys 'world' and bys 'until' 
will doubtless both be pronounced [bIz] because 
of the gwin/gwynn distinction.

>The reason for the absence of diacritics in KK 
>and thus SWF is simply that English is without 
>them.

Did George eschew them for philosophical grounds, or because Nance did?

>Inconsistently KK users repudiate English 
>borrowings in the lexicon, but embrace this 
>English spelling convention in the orthography.

Naïve of them... ;-)

>Cornish phonology is complicated and varied now 
>in dialect. We cannot manage without diacritics 
>and it is not sensible to pretend that we can.

Correct. And we can't choose diacritics that 
aren't available to anyone just because (with all 
due respect, Owen) they are used for functions 
other than the ones for which they are to be used 
in Cornish.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com