Re: "Brithenig"; stress again

[raybrown@macline.co.uk (Raymond A. Brown)]

At 11:29 27/4/98, John Cowan wrote:
>Padraic Brown wrote:
>
>> > How do you pronounce Brythenig?  I'm guessing "Brittany."  !!!G
>>
>> Hm.  That's a good question.  My guess would have been ['brIthenIg], but
>> if they're famous for chopping off bits, then ['britheni] might do.
>> When the Kernow aren't otherwise pronouncing it [seja 'mista 'rista], they
>> pronounce it properly as ['brIthenex]. ;^)
>
>AFAIK written final stops are not deleted, so I say it [brI 'Te nIg]
>on the Penultimate Stress assumption, tracking its English name
>"Britannic".

Nor was I aware that final stops or plosives were ever 'chopped off'.
Certainly initial stress in this word cannot be supported either by Romance
or by the example of the Brittonic langs.  It could only have come about
through the influence of Gaelic which, I think, is unlikely.

The stress [brI'TenIg] would follow modern Welsh practice (I don't think
English can used as a guide).

[....]
>
>BTW, I now note that French-style stress is really inconsistent with
>what the Web page says about vowels, which are lax [@ E I O U] when
>unstressed and tense [a e i o u] when stressed.  So there is a noticeable
>stress.  I think we have to re-open this question....

End stress is certainly there in French, but it affects whole phrases
rather than just words.  But the end-stress of middle Welsh clearly did
cause pretonic vowels to weaken; this is the only explanation for oddities
in modern Welsh where, e.g. we have 'haul' [haIl] (sun), but 'heulwen'
['h@Ilwen] (sunshine), where the [a] has apparently weakened to [@] even
tho the syllable is _now_ stressed; in middle Welsh it was unstressed.  The
middle Welsh system also makes sense of the strange rule for pronouncing
{y}.  I thought it'd been agreed that this was the stress pattern of
Brithenig, in which case it is [brITE'nig].
------------------------------------------------

But at 11:49 27/4/98, John Cowan wrote:
>Andrew Fferreir yscrifef:
>
>> I usually pronounce it ['brIthenIg], not sure if that's the correct stress
>> though.
>
>Well, now that you've changed the Web page, there is no question
>what the stress is:
>
># Stress in Brithenig is placed on the penultimate, or second last
># syllable. Monosyllables are stressed if it is open, or without
># any following consonants, or followed by one consonant or ch, dd,
># ss or th.
>
>So [brI 'Te nIg] it is, spoken in the land of ['ke mEr] and elsewhere.
>Alddarestaya will have to re-learn.
>
>--

Now I'm really confused   :=(

Raifun ( [r@I'vun] or ['raIvUn] )

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