Re: Stress accent?

[Padraic Brown <pbrown@nova.umuc.edu>]

On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> 
> Yes, final -d I believe is lost in many varieties of Spanish.

Indeed, or soften it [madh 'ridh].  I think Andalucian is one of the most
loss prone of all the dialects.  They lose final -d, -s, -n, -z, etc. etc. 
They also lose medial -s-.  I recall having some difficulty figuring out
the Spanish of the opera "El Gato Montes", as the main characters (whether
by birth or by script, I am unsure) seem to be of Southern extraction; and
their dialect was rather pronounced.  I don't think they losr -r, though. 

> 
> >[Note that I understand that n and r are different, but both _are_
> >vowels occuring in the same locations; with similar phenomena.]
> >
> >Sigh.  I guess we must be more careful!
> 
> Indeed. Final stress only ensures that the _vowel_ in the final syllable is
> preserved & not weakened to [@] or some other 'unstressed' sound; it most
> certainly does not ensures that final consonants are preserved.
> 
> Which means that the question of Brithenig stress is still unresolved.  I
> think it all boils down to whether we believe the Romance nature of the
> language was strong enough to preserve the stress in the Vulgar Latin
> position which in the case of Brithenig, like modern French, would mean
> word final stress, or whether Brithenig, like modern Welsh, would've been
> affected by the British* English abhorrence for final stress and change to
> the modern Welsh habit of stressing the penultimate.

Where did this Brit-Eng and therefore Welsh phenomenon come from?  I'd
like to think Brithenig is Romance enough to withstand whatever it is; but
if there are sound reasons for the change in stress, then I suppose I must
relearn the pronunciation of all those words.  ;^)

> 
> [*Americans seem to have no problem, cf the different Brit. & American
> pronunciations of 'cafe', 'debris', 'garage', 'buffet' etc. ]

I've heard English folk pronounce them ['ke:f], ['de: bri], ['gaer radj]
and ['buf fet].  I assume that's what you mean.  Even some Merkins say
['buf fe:].

> 
> 
> Well, things seem OK now.  One problem, I think, is that the new-fangled
> software I'm expected to use is just about taxing the memory of my ancient
> machine.  That's being remedied  (today I hope) when a spanking new
> Macintosh arrives with loads & loads of RAM and all the rest (and a rather
> larger screen than I'm squinting at at the moment).

I remember when 64k was a real load of memory.  I don't think my Kernu
grammar would even fit on that size machine!

> 
> Ray.
> 
Padraic.