[Spellyans] <y Y> + diacritical

[Michael Everson]

At 20:56 +0100 2008-06-25, Owen Cook wrote:

>><y> is [I] and <i> is [i:] in monosyllables and 
>>their derivatives. Except that the SWF is 
>>incoherent here where bÿs/bës are concerned.
>
>Isn't fixing incoherencies part of the point of this whole undertaking?

Yes; the diacritics on bÿs/bës is a way of fixing 
that incoherence. Had it been <beis> there would 
have been no issue with that class of words.

>>Because we can't succeed by "fixing" the SWF by 
>>changing the spelling of bys and dydh to bis 
>>and didh. They elected to preserve the bogus 
>>[I:] here. If we put diaeresis on <dÿdh> and 
>><dëdh> we are treading lightly. If we change 
>>these to <dídh> and <dédh> we have gone too far.
>
>When did we decide this? It may be that our 
>final decision about <y> and <i> requires us to 
>change words like these anyway, no?

We do have decisions to make, but I think we have 
to take it as read that the distribution in 
monosyllables is fixed. For instance, dydh ~ 
dedhyow is now part of the SWF (as is dedh ~ 
dedhyow) in the form of Vocalic Alternation. I 
don't think that we could get away with changing 
this to didh ~ dedhyow since VA is already a 
bitter enough pill the KK users have to swallow.

I think we should be conservative here.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com