[Spellyans] Normalization of words in -ak and -ek

[Michael Everson]

On 4 Jun 2009, at 00:26, Owen Cook wrote:

> I think Michael's suggestion here is a good one. Final -ak that  
> alternates with -og- is an easy rule to remember, while -ek  
> alternating with -eg- is a no brainer. There may be edge cases that  
> are hard to classify,

There's and medhek 'doctor' medhygyon and gowek 'liar', gowygyon --  
but those were always anomalous, so no change there. :-)

> but the principle seems good to me. And the fact is that none of the  
> other varieties have seriously grappled with this particular question.

Well, George ends up with some changes (vis à vis Nance) of -ak to -ek  
and -eg- to -og- and vice versa, but his rationale is to reflect  
underlying forms in Proto-Brythonic. What I have proposed is a  
synchronic normalization, as broadly supported by the texts as Nance's  
own selection. By this I mean since for many words the texts offer us  
little more than (both, say) -ek/-ak for a given word, yet Nance gave  
us feminines and plurals and other derivatives. Unfortunately he  
didn't comb over that list for pattern as I have recently done; I  
suspect he would have approved of the proposed scheme.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/