[Spellyans] Phonemic inventory

[Michael Everson]

At 09:03 +0000 2008-07-04, Jon Mills wrote:
>I maintain that there would be an audible 
>difference between my pronunciations  of [gwe:T 
>a] and [gwe:T ha]. It is a question of juncture. 
>Compare the pronunciations of English 'why 
>cheats' and 'white sheets'. Both are 
>[waitSi:ts]. Nevertheless there is an audible 
>difference.

One is [wai_tSi:ts] and the other is 
[wait_Si:ts], but indeed in my dialect I would 
have [wai_tSi:ts] and [w at it_Si:ts] as the quality 
of the vowel in <why> and <white> is different. 
(Conservative Pennsylvania dialect infected with 
too much learning and 18.5 years in Ireland.)

>The 'because I say so' attitude is the 
>particular problem for Cornish at the moment.

Mayhap.

>It is why there has been so much strife and 
>bitterness in negotiations to produce the SWF.

Bitterness from *our* side has been a reaction 
against a revisionist reconstruction riddled with 
errors. We had to fight against it for a long 
time, all the while receiving years of nastiness 
for daring to say that the emperor had no clothes.

>It is why we have a SWF that has a political 
>rather than a sound linguistic basis. It is why 
>we have a Standard Written Form rather than a 
>Single Written Form.

I don't consider <bÿs>~,bës> to be problematic in 
terms of "singleness". Do you?

>There is nothing wrong with saying, "This is how 
>I pronounce Cornish, I accept that others may 
>prefer to pronounce Cornish differently from me, 
>and are entitled to hold their own opinions 
>concerning how Cornish should be pronounced."

You're right, there's not. Our reference grammar 
is for users of Revived Cornish, however, and 
they need recommendations.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com