[Spellyans] y-umlaut in 'Beunans Meriasek' ?

[ajtrim at msn.com]

In lines 139 & 140, we have:

ke ha due pan vy plesyes myns may hyllen sur esyes
This would indicate that <ij> is another way of writing <ye>.

This is consistent with <ÿ> being another way of writing <ye>.



In lines 229 & 230, we have:

ahanas vs 3yn cowsys
du asota mur presijs

This would indicate that -sys and -sijs are pronounced the same, so presumably, -syes would have had the same pronunciation too.

I suggest that the <y>, <ij> and <ye> were all pronounced like <ee> in English "see" (i.e. [i:]), but probably not stressed.



In lines 555 & 556, filij rhymes with yly.



Regards,

Andrew J. Trim 





From: Eddie Climo 
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 5:55 PM
To: Standard Cornish discussion list 
Subject: [Spellyans] y-umlaut in 'Beunans Meriasek' ?


An idle query: I'm currently reading the e-book edition of Whitley Stokes' edition of Beunans Meriasek, which can be downloaded free of charge from:

  http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=meriasek


An oddity that I've noticed repeatedly is the use of < ij >, as in ll.314-316:


  Ny yv plesijs hag a vyn
  boys revlijs drethogh certeyn
     ha meriasek kekefrys ....



In Dutch, as best I recall, this digraph is used as an alternative for < y umlaut >. Might this be the case here as well, giving us:
  plesijs, revlijs > plesÿs, revlÿs



Eddie Foirbeis Climo
- -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- - -- -
Dres ethom akennow byner re bons lyeshes
Accenti non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Spellyans mailing list
Spellyans at kernowek.net
http://kernowek.net/mailman/listinfo/spellyans_kernowek.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://kernowek.net/pipermail/spellyans_kernowek.net/attachments/20081121/25d66ece/attachment.html>