Re: Stress accent?

[Andrew Smith <hobbit@mail.earthlight.co.nz>]

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

> 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.
> 
I'm rooting for modern French and medieval Welsh now.  While Brithenig is
the living language of a state distinct from English domination in
language matters i see no reason why English would force such a change on
Brithenig.
> 
> Yep - not helped by the Easter break.  In Britain Good Friday is a public
> holiday as is Easter Monday.  It meant that from Friday through to Monday
> all I could contact when I phoned my ISP was an answer-phone!
> 
A couple of weekends ago my ISP when down.  Not being able to read e-mail
is very stressful.  You have my sympathies!

This turned up from a friend:

>  A  hurricane came by unexpectedly in the South Pacific and a ship went
> down and was lost. One of the passengers, a man, found himself swept up on
> the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies, nothing. Only
> bananas and coconuts.
>
> Used to 5-star hotels, this guy had no idea what to do, so for the next
> four
>  months he ate bananas,drank coconut juice and longed for his old life and
> fixed his gaze
>  on the sea, hoping to spot a rescue ship.
>
> One day, as he was lying on the beach, he spotted movement out of the
> corner of his eye. It was a rowboat, and in it was the most gorgeous woman
> he had ever seen.
>
> She rowed up to him. In disbelief, he asked her: "Where did you come from?
> How did you get here?" "I rowed from the other side of the island," she
> said.
> "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."
> "Amazing," he said. "I didn't know anyone else had survived. How many are
>  there? You were lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."
>
>  "It's only me," she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up; nothing did."
> He was confused. "Then how did you get the rowboat?" "Oh, simple," replied
> the
>  woman.
>  "I made the rowboat out of materials that I found on the island. The oars
> were  whittled from Gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm
> branches and
> the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
>
> "B-B-But that's impossible," stuttered the man. "You had no tools or
> hardware.
>  How did you manage?" "Oh, that was no problem," replied the woman. "On
> the
>  other side of the island there is a very unusual stratum of alluvial rock
> exposed. I found that if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln,
> it
> melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the
> tools to make the hardware.  But enough of that," she said. "Where do you
> live?" Sheepishly, he confessed  that he had been sleeping on the beach
> the
> whole time. "Well, let's row over  to my place, then," she said.
>
>  After a few minutes of rowing she docked the boat at a small wharf. As
> the man
>  looked to the shore he nearly fell out of the boat. Before him was a
> stone
> walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
>
>  While the woman tied up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope,
> the man
>  could only stare ahead, dumbstruck. As they walked into the house, she
> said
>  casually, "It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down, please; would you
> like a drink?"
>
>   "No, no thank you," he said, still dazed. "I can't take any more coconut
> juice."
>
>   "It's not coconut juice," the woman replied. "I have a still. How about
> a
> Pina
>   Colada?" Trying to hide his amazement, the man accepted, and they sat
> down
>  on    her couch to talk.
>
>   After they had exchanged their stories, the woman announced, "I'm going
> to
>  slip into something comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and
> shave?  There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."
>
>  No longer questioning anything, the man went into the bathroom. There in
> the  cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a
> hollow
> ground edge were fastened onto it's end inside a swivel mechanism.
>
>  "This woman is amazing," he mused. "What next?" When he returned, she
> greeted
> him wearing nothing but vines, strategically positioned, and smelling
> faintly
>  of gardenias.
>
>   She beckoned for him to sit down next to her."Tell me," she began,
>  suggestively, slithering closer to him, "we've been out here for a very
>  long    time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really
> feel lik e doing right now, something you've been longing for all these
> months. You  know..." She stared into his eyes. He  couldn't believe what
> he was hearing.
>
>  "You mean--?" he replied, "I can check my e-mail from here?"

What more can one say?

- andrew.

Andrew Smith                                  <hobbit@earthlight.co.nz>

MAN, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many
accomplishments; still owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil
and the fact that it rains.
							   - Anonymous