[Spellyans] The Pronounciation of 'r' in traditional Cornish

[Michael Everson]

On 27 Mar 2017, at 17:20, Harry Hawkey <bendyfrog at live.com> wrote:
> 
> Tony Hearn wrote:
> 
> To my ears it is the use among learners and speakers of the West Country English [ɹ] which makes so much spoken Cornish sound less than convincing.

To my ears it is what makes spoken Cornish sound MORE than convincing.

The worst thing about much spoken Cornish is the London-derived diphthongs. 

> Michael Everson wrote:
> 
> We recommend the retroflex [ɹ] generally and the tap [ɾ] intervocalically.

It works. It sounds good. It’s based in part on features of traditional Cornu-English dialect. Those speakers were the heirs of the last speakers of Cornish, and there are recordings of it. Unfortunately, Lhuyd’s description is too vague to really say very much, and of course he seems to be expecting Welsh ‹rh› at least in principle. (I learned this in extensive discussions with Neil Kennedy back when we were working to go from UCR to something more inclusive of RLC and RMC preferences; that became what we now call KS1. Modern KS was prepared and finalized after the SWF spec was published.)

Michael Everson