[Spellyans] gwiryoneth

[Ray Chubb]

 From a user's point of view I consider final 'dh' to be simply ugly,  
therefore the more that this disfigurement of Cornish script can be  
avoided the better as far as I am concerned.

On 18 Du 2010, at 07:39, Michael Everson wrote:

>> From: Nicholas Williams
>>
>>> Lhuyd writes guironeth twice. Guironeth cannot be ascribed to  
>>> contamination with Welsh. So guironeth is more likely to be  
>>> genuine than a form in -edh. The final segment was voiceless.
>
> On 18 Nov 2010, at 00:35, Daniel Prohaska wrote:
>
>> In your opinion Nicholas, because it happens to fit your theory of  
>> the phonological history of Cornish. But Lhuyd has other words with  
>> final <dh> in unstressed syllables.
>
> Yes, Dan. But you haven't addressed the argument, which has been  
> given several times already. We have an explanation for why Lhuyd  
> writes both -eth and -edh in some words. It is that he heard -eth  
> but sometimes wrote -edh because of what Nicholas has just called  
> "contamination" with his native language. He'd never have written - 
> eth if he'd been hearing -edh. It'd be -eth right through. The same  
> can be said for -ev. He couldn't have heard "genev" because the  
> forms by that time were "gene vy" and "genama" or "genam". The -ev  
> is most probably "contamination" with his native language.
>
> Moreover, we see that throughout the system of other consonants we  
> have devoicing in final unstressed position. By Occam's razor we  
> note that the simplest explanation is that (1) the interdental and  
> labiodental fricatives behaved just like the other consonants and  
> devoiced in unstressed final position and that (2) where Lhuyd gives  
> -eð and -ev it is on the basis of Welsh, particularly has he gives  
> them inconsistently as against -eθ.
>
> Our theory fits the evidence better than the theory that -eð and -ev  
> were operative and that somehow the -eθ in guironeth and other  
> words... erm.... Well, no, I don't think I've heard an explanation.
>
> In sum, since a decision has to be made as to whether to write -eth  
> or -edh, we prefer the former, because phonologically the  
> explanation is simpler, and because even allowing for doubt we know  
> that we are not making a mistake if we write -th as the texts do.
>
> This is not rash, and it is not unfounded in strong and sensible  
> reasoning.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
>
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Ray Chubb

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