[Spellyans] a denewen "aside"

[Michael Everson]

On 11 Feb 2010, at 14:35, Daniel Prohaska wrote:

> While <tenewen> is not the exclusive spelling, it is by far the most frequent, and across the widest distribution of the texts.

That still doesn't mean it's the best one; frequency is not a sufficient argument on its own.

For this word, the fact that -e- appears under stress is a *good* and *linguistic* reason to spell it tenewen. It is entirely consistent with our spelling colon/colonow rather than colan, for instance. 

I do not believe that etymological reconstruction is a sufficient linguistic reason to change from traditional spellings -- not when it is merely cosmetic. Remember, it was George who changed from traditional spellings in 1987.

> I meant the Middle Cornish attestations of <a denewen> were all with final –en. I didn’t mean all attestation of <tenewen> and their derivatives.
> The LC attestations usually show an intrusive <r>, such as Lhuyd’s <terneụan>, so I have added an SWF/L variant <ternewen>.

Is the variant with -r- used in RLC?

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