[Spellyans] Box

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Sun Oct 10 10:03:05 BST 2010


On 10 Oct 2010, at 15:12, janicelobb at tiscali.co.uk wrote:

> Kist/cist is fine for RLC pronunciation of the SWF. As I read my little  book of SWF, had it been a long vowel, pronounced -ee-, we would have to use an umbrella graph and spell it "kust"! (cf reeg/rug)

That's a misunderstanding, I'm afraid. 

"u" is used to represent words which have an alternating pronunciation, RMC /y/ ("wrug", like French "lune", German "grün") and RLC /i/ (wrîg in one RLC spelling). It's an umbrella graph because it serves both communities.

"oo" is an umbrella graph too, for words which have an alternating pronunciation, RMC /o/ and RLC /u/.

The SWF isn't very consistent, but in KS we also have mm/bm and nn/dn as umbrella graphs. If you see "nn" you know you can pre-occlude it; if RMC speakers see "dn" they know that they don't have to pre-occlude it. And we have ÿ/ë, which RMC speakers can pronounce /iː/ and RLC speakers can pronounce /eː/. And we have "â" in closed syllables where the vowel is long, which RMC speakers can pronounce /æː/ and RLC speakers can pronounce /ɒː/ (brâs). 

These things are pretty decent compromises given the two dialects of Revived Cornish.

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





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