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

[Daniel Prohaska]

I use the complementary distribution of [ɾ] (intervocaliacally, also across word boundaries) as well as [ɹ] (absolute initial, absolute final and pre-consonantal). This is what Richard Gendall recommended in his guide to Revived Late Cornish pronunciation. It is the distribution that the Anglo-Cornish dialect in West Penwith traditionally has. 
Whether this was an actual feature of the Cornish language at any given time remains unanswerable. Rhotacised [z] as in ‹esa› > ‹era› and ‹gasa› > ‹gara›, usually becomes [ɾ] or [r] in Latin and Germanic before it develops into something else, so I’d say these two sound are likely to have been in the Cornish sound inventory at some point. 
As far as Revived Cornish in general is concerned, I think almost anything goes, except for dropping the postvocalic r’s (as in RP).

Dan  


> On 28 Mar 2017, at 10:16, Christian Semmens <christian.semmens at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> With regard to the trilled [r], is it likely that all vestiges of this sound were expunged from Cornish so very late, to be completely replaced by [ɹ] across the country? 
> 
> I find that hard to believe, especially as [r] and [ɾ] forms such readily identifiable sounds in Scottish, Welsh and Irish English, but not in Cornish. Even then it is only Scottish that displays any significant use of [r]. Actually, I can't think of anyone in West Penwith (or elsewhere in Cornwall for that matter) that used either in normal speech, I certainly never heard anyone use them, but then my experience hardly counts for much.  
> 
> Christian
> 
> On 27 March 2017 at 23:03, Craig Weatherhill <craig at agantavas.org <mailto:craig at agantavas.org>> wrote:
> On the other hand, he spent much of his time in Oxford, so when he describes a sound as being "as in English", is he talking about English as spoken there?
> 
> Craig
> 
> 
> 
> On 2017 Mer 27, at 20:33, Harry Hawkey wrote:
> 
>> Well, that solves something that I've been wondering about for quite some time. Thanks for this!
>> 
>> On 27/03/17 19:50, Nicholas Williams wrote:
>>> Lhuyd was born in 1660 in Llanforda and brought up there. Llanforda is in the parish of Oswestry in Shropshire.
>>> The area was Welsh-speaking at the time of his birth and the dialect
>>> pronounced Welsh long a with a raised pronunciation. For him the vowel in tad ‘father’
>>> would have been close to [æ:].
>>> 
>>> Nicholas
>>> 
>>>> On 27 Mar 2017, at 18:05, Harry Hawkey <bendyfrog at live.com <mailto:bendyfrog at live.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> But surely Welsh 'bras'  (Lhuyd 'brâs') has neither of these sounds?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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