[Spellyans] More on bys/bes words and diacritical marks

[Michael Everson]

At 11:10 +0100 2008-07-10, A. J. Trim wrote:

>Yes, beys is OK by me, and it looks more Cornish.

It is not an option.

Folks,

We're not re-inventing the wheel here. We don't 
have a blank slate. We devised KS with 
inclusivity and authenticity in mind and -- 
amazingly -- a lot of that actually got accepted 
into the SWF. The SWF has, however, 
inconsistencies and errors which make it 
undesirable for use. One of those is that you 
can't distinguish <res> 'necessary' [re:z] which 
has only one pronunciation from SWF <bes> 
'finger' which can be pronounced [bi:z] or 
[be:z], and can't distingush SWF <bys> 'finger' 
which can be pronounced [bi:z] or [be:z] from 
<bys> 'but' which is only pronounced [bIz]. And 
there is a class of these words and it isn't very 
small.

We treat lightly by writing <bës>~<bÿs> for this 
class of words. Opting for <beis> or <beys>, 
which was vehemently rejected by the KK members 
of the AHG, will not give us a corrected SWF/KS 
which will have a chance of winning over KK users 
or UC users who want to give the SWF a chance but 
will be uncomfortable with its mistakes.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com