[Spellyans] <y Y> + diacritical

[Michael Everson]

At 12:45 +0100 2008-06-25, Christian Semmens wrote:
>At the risk of stirring up a hornets nest, I think this may be taking
>things a bit too far. I think everyone would be happy with 'deth' or
>'dyth' without recourse to diacritics at all. I strongly suspect that
>no one will actually write them once they become fluent enough anyway.
>Deith still looks horrible to me (as does chei, rei etc..), and I've
>tried to like it, really I have.
>
>Is it really such a huge problem?

It is. It is a problem for readers of texts 
written in the other dialect. The brief was to be 
phonetic. The SWF doesn't give learners enough 
information.

Take a word, <pes>. A learner sees it. Is this a 
<bys>/<bes> word? Or is it a <res> word? What 
about bes, des, fes, ges, hes, les, mes, nes, 
ses, tes, or ves? (I'm sure some of these are not 
attested; I just made a list.)

If we write bÿs/bës, the learner who encounters 
pes will know it's not got a *pys form.

Making this distinction is good orthography design.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com