> Secondly, many Welsh people have two distinct sounds of this type in their > English, inasmuch as they pronounce "aye" (as in "aye, aye, sir") > differently from "eye". In this case their "aye" will sound more or less > identical to General American "eye". > Applying this to Welsh, most native speakers of Welsh distinguish between > pairs such as "tei" (a man's necktie) and "tai" (houses, plural of ty). The > first has the same sound as Welsh English "eye" (or for some people like > English English or American English "play"), the second that of Welsh > English "aye". > > For a South Wales pronunciation of Welsh, you get the "aye" sound in most > words of one syllable (cae, cau, cai, sain, dau, rhai, llai, faint, rhaid), > and words stressed on the last syllable (nesau, Cymraeg). Certain structure > words, though, have the "eye" sound (neu, gwneud), as do English borrowings > (tei, reit, teils (= tie, right, tiles)). In the non-final syllables of > all other words you usually get the "eye" sound, thus "neidio, pleidiol, > aelod, goleuni". Am I right in deducing from this that the many Welsh people who have both sounds in their ENGLISH are therefore not well-served by an orthographic convention that systematically prescribes the same Welsh spelling -- EI -- to any loan from English whose (Southern British) pronunciation contains [ai]? (assuming they want the spelling of the Welsh loan to reflect their Welsh-English pronunciation of the English word). Secondly, am I right in thinking that, if you want a consistent spelling in Welsh for every such English loan, AI would be a better transdialectal bet than EI? (Or is the matter far too complex and confused for any such judgement to be in order?) ************************ Nigel Love Linguistics Cape Town NLOVE@BEATTIE.UCT.AC.ZA ************************