Re: Son of dZ

[John Cowan <cowan@locke.ccil.org>]

Andrew Smith wrote:

> I have finally got around to looking at _An Introduction to the Celtic
> Languages_ (1995) and reading the section on orthography.  To recap
> Brithenig has a voiced final fricative which needs to be distinguished
> from -g, the voiced velar stop when final.  What I've read suggests that
> this would be -j (so ffelij).

O Hideous. Eo brodest.

> The evidence: Welsh has borrowed j for all
> positions from English; one orthography for Breton, the Orthographie
> universitaire, uses specifically it for word final -dZ#, and Manx has j
> for /dj/ in an orthography created for that language by a native Welsh
> speaker.

Brithenig, though, isn't a Celtic language: it's a Romance language,
and its orthography has a Romance foundation.  The f vs ff and d vs dd
are just decorations, and ll is just as much Romance as Celtic,
though with a different realization.

I still like ffelig', which can even be accounted for as a false
etymology, like French poing, doigt (which never had any g there
since Proto-Romance times); the implication is that the scribes
believed that ffelig' < *ffelige.  It also works for ync' (inch,
or less likely ounce) from UNCIU.  Otherwise we need another
ad hoc solution for final voiceless fricative.

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
	You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
	You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
		Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)