Orthography

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

On Sat, 10 Apr 1999, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

I think I am going to up the ante, and for that reason I'll add Martin to
the discussion since he is learning the language and any decision we make
affects his studies.  (Incidently, for everyone else, he has been asking
some questions on the use of the infinitive with prepositions which I'm
going to have to revise on the Brithenig homepage.)

To recap:

For historical reasons the soft g and the soft c can occur as a final
sound following the loss of a final front vowel. While several Celtic
languages languages *here* uses the letter j for words borrowed from
English, or from French in the case of Breton, for this sound, it's not a
necessarily seen as a naturalised letter to the languages in question.
The preferred choice, for some people, is to mark the final soft sound
with a dot or an accent above it, using the apostrophe in email.  The
cluster cg from Old English is an alternative that I have previously
dismissed but I should include as an option, although it does not cover
final soft c.

Now I want to quote Ray:

> But, as Andrew probably recalls (maybe in emails we exchanged before the
> list got extended :) , I've never been keen on the use of {f} = /v/ and
> {ff} = /f/ in Brithening.  Both Breton & Cornish use {v} and {f}
> respectively for the two sounds and, indeed, in medieval Welsh some scribes
> followed the post-Norman practice and used {v} = /v/ and {f} = /f/ also.
> Personally, had I "done a Brithenig" before Andrew I'd have used an
> orthography more like Breton than Welsh.  But I think it's too late now to
> change this in Brithenig & most people seem happy enough with it.
>
I want to review my position on this part of the orthography.  When I
began work on Brithenig I adapted the orthography that evolved here where
in native Welsh writing {v} was written as a circle and became obscure and
was replaced by {ff}.  Despite this I still find I prefer {v} and {f} for
these sounds but decided they had become 'established' features of the
language which made it different, and it was too late to change this
feature of the language as other people became interested in it.

So I'm going to take this opportunity to ask the punters: "Should
Brithenig remain different and keep its 'Welsh' orthography, or should we
say the change in spelling never occured *there* as it did *here* for
various reasons and convert this feature of the spelling so it is more
like other Romance languages?"

Take your time thinking this over as I'm going to wander down south and
visit family again from Monday until Friday.  Tell me what you think then.
- andrew.

Andrew Smith, Intheologus 			hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

"Break someone's leg."
			- Old Orc Saying.