[Spellyans] short unstressed i

[Michael Everson]

At 09:36 +0100 2008-06-27, nicholas williams wrote:
>I have shown that KK is completely incoherent in its distribution of 
>the graphs <i> and <y>.
>Because the SWF MF has inherited much of KK the same incoherence is 
>maintained, rather than simplified.

One thing we had agreed for KS was to use what we called 
"etymological" spellings in final unstressed syllables. By this we 
meant that words like "colon", "holan", "pellen" would retain the 
vowel which re-appears when suffixes are added: "colonow", "holanow", 
"pellednow/pellennow".

I am pretty sure that this notion of "etymological" spellings was 
conveyed by Andrew Climo to the AHG -- although the SWF specification 
uses a different meaning from the one we used, namely, that 
"etymological" should refer to George's (very uncertain in my view) 
reconstructed etymologies. I believe that we should continue with our 
understanding and not by any means be fettered by George's 
reconstructions. (Why should "onen" be changed to be written "onan"? 
because KK has it that way?)

Having said that, Nicholas, what are the imolications for the words 
you list below:

>If we take short unstressed i [I] for example, we notice that it is 
>spelt with <y> in some words and with <i>
>in others. Here are some examples from Dan's dictionary:
>
>kunys 'firewood', palys 'palace' but gonis 'till ground, chalis 'chalice'
>
>kryjyk 'believing', krityk 'critic' but Mestresik 'Miss', meppik 'little boy'
>
>glesin 'lawn', kegin 'kitchen', kennin 'leeks' but termyn 'time', 
>melyn 'yellow', kemmyn 'common'
>
>jentyl 'gentile' but krokodil 'crocodile'.
>
>These examples contained a short unstressed [I] after the main 
>stresss. Pretonic [I] is equally chaotic.
>
>How do they expect anyone to learn this?


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