A Bit About Spelling
You will be
aware of some of the arguments around orthography! For many words it doesn’t
matter, because there is no way they can be confused with any other word. e.g. Today
hedhyw has/had a number of other spellings (and
pronunciations) – hethow, hithou,
hidhu.
However, there are many cases where you need to be more careful with
your spelling, or you could convey the wrong meaning, e.g. We have been using hager (SWF spelling) to mean ugly, stormy, evil and
other horrible descriptions., hagar (RLC
spelling) means the same, so, in this example, varying the final unstressed vowel
makes no difference – the pronunciation is schwa anyway. But if you change the
first, stressed, vowel you get an opposite meaning:
hegar
lovely,
amiable, all things nice, etc.
Tho
Cinderella hegar, bes thera diw hager whor dhedhy.
Cinderella
was lovely/amiable, but she had two ugly/horrible sisters.
Here are some other words where minor changes alter meaning (and
pronunciation). Words ending with one consonant are pronounced with a long
vowel, while words ending with two consonants have a shorter vowel:
bal
(m) (balyow) a
mine, dig, excavation
an
bal the
mine
ball
(f) a
plague, nuisance
an
vall na that
nuisance
an
Vall the
Bubonic Plague
bell[1] war,
warfare, bell
pel
(f) a
ball
an
bel the
ball
palas to
dig, to excavate
jynn
palas a
(mechanical) digger
pales a
fish/ice/salt cellar, “palace”
pil a
pile
poll a
pool, creek, top end, pit, etc.
pols a
short time, a moment
pollen
düs a
swimming pool(for people)
Here are some more place names:
Baldhu black/dark
mine-workings
Poldew
(Poldu 1446) dark
pool
Polgooth (Polgoyth 1500) goose pool
Polstain (Polstene 1522) tin pit
Penpoll head
of a creek
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