§ 2 The Vowels
Simple: a, â, e, ê, i, î, o, ô, ŏ, u, û, ŭ, y, ŷ.
Compound: aw, ei, ey, ew, oi, oy, ou, ow.
A. Simple Vowels
1. a, short, as a in man. Before l and r it is generally sounded as o in not.
2. â, long, the lengthened sound of a short, not as the English broad a in father, or long a in mane, but as a broad a is commonly sounded in Cornish English. Thus bâ would have something between the sound of the English word bare (of course without the r trilled at all) in the mouth of a correct speaker, and the actual sound of the bleat of a sheep. 56
In some words, and especially before a liquid followed by a consonant, a tends to be sounded as aw or short o. Thus âls, cliff, gwander, weakness, wartha, upper, are sounded awls, gwonder, wortha or worra, and brâs, great, is sounded brawz.
In unaccented syllables a represents nearly the sound of u in until, or, as a final, the English sound of a at the end of proper names, such as Vienna, Maria, etc., which is more or less the final e of German, meine, deine, etc., or perhaps the e of the French words le, de, me, etc.
3. e, short, as e in men, pen, etc.
4. ê, long, as ai in main, ay in say. 57
5. i, short, as i in in, pin, etc.
6. î, long, as ee in seen, etc.
7. o, short, as o in on.
8. ô, long, as aw in dawn, not as o in bone.
9. ŏ, obscure, as o in London, ton, etc.
10. u, short, as u in full.
11. û, long, as oo in fool.
12. ǔ, obscure, as u in until.
13. ŷ, long, as i in mine.
14. y, short, as y in carry, marry, etc. This is used chiefly as an unaccented final in a word of more than one syllable.
In the case of the letter y, there is a variation of sound in such monosyllables as nŷ, whŷ, jŷ, hŷ under certain circumstances. In this system of spelling the circumflex is omitted when these words are enclitic.
B. Compound Vowels
Of these, aw, ai, ei, ay, ey, ou, are only repetitions of the simple vowels ô, û, and ŷ. The other four have sounds not otherwise represented.
1. aw has the same sound as ô. It is very rarely used.
2. ai, ay, ei, ey, have nearly the same sound as ŷ, rather more diphthongalised.
3. eu, ew have the sound of ew in the English word dew, the usual English long u. This sound is also represented in Cornish by y consonant followed by u, as in the word yu, is, which has exactly the sound of the English personal pronoun you.
4. oi, oy have the sound of oy in boy.
5. Ow has two sounds—(1) as an unaccented final, as o in bone. This is also its sound when it occurs without any consonant, in the possessive pronoun ow, my, and the participle particle ow; (2) in other cases it sounds as ou in you, and rarely as ow in now.
6. Ou has the same sound as û, and as the second sound of ow. It is the regular symbol for that sound in Breton, and very commonly in the Cornish dramas, where, as in Breton, u commonly represented, approximately, the French u, which later became î or ew.
General Remarks on the Vowels
In the Middle Cornish manuscripts the vowels are represented in various ways, and there is a special uncertainty about unaccented and obscure vowels.
Vowels were sometimes lengthened by doubling, or by adding a y, and rarely, until Jordan’s Creation, by adding a mute e after the closing consonant; but often quantity was not indicated at all.
Long î (ee in see) was more often than not represented by y, but, as in Welsh, y not infrequently represented the obscure vowel (u in until), and often a sound which later became a short e, but in unaccented syllables was, as is not unusually the case in English, more of the nature of the obscure vowel, or perhaps something between that and a short i. Indeed all unaccented vowels tend to become obscure, very much as they do in English, and hence are variously expressed.
The u of the earlier MSS. probably once represented approximately the French u or the German u, the u of Devon and East Cornwall English, or the ao of Scottish Gaelic, not exactly the same sounds, but very near to each other. As in Greek and Welsh, this sound approached nearer and nearer to î (ee in seen), until in Cornish it ceased to be recognised as having any u sound in it at all. In Welsh it is still written as u, and in carefully spoken Welsh is quite distinguishable from î. In Breton the sound is still approximately that of the French u. In some words in Cornish this sound became ew (as in the English word few) and rarely û (oo in moon), but generally it became î (English ee). 59a
What was once the sound of the French and Breton eu or the German o, was represented in the MSS. by u, eu, ue. Later this became ê (ay in may). Thus, dueth or duth, “came,” became dêth; luen, leun, “full,” became lên; due, “comes,” became dê; mur, meur, “great,” became mêr. This change is found occasionally as early as the Poem of the Passion. The rhythm shows that ue and eu form only one syllable. In the case of lues (=luas), many, which later became lîas (or leeas), the rhythm shows that the u and e did not form a single vowel. Occasionally, as in the second person plural of certain tenses, eu of the early MSS. became ew, which it was probably intended to represent, but was often confused with ou (=û or oo). 59b
The sound of ô or aw, as it certainly became in later Cornish, was represented by e, o, oy, a, oa, ao, au, aw. The tendency to pronounce a as aw or short o before l, n, r, doubled or followed by a consonant, and sometimes single, is very marked in the spelling of late Cornish, and in the present pronunciation of place-names. There is no evidence of its age in Cornish; but it is very common in English and Irish, though unknown in standard Welsh or Breton.
There seems no doubt, by the same evidence, that a long y of older Cornish often became i, as in the English word mine. Vulgarly, as with the English long i, it sometimes even became oy. Boson writes choy for chy, house, but Lhuyd writes it tshẏi or tshei, which last is its usual modern sound in place-names. Nŷ, we, whŷ, you, jŷ, they, and hŷ, she, are written nei, huei, dzhei, hei, by Lhuyd, and Jenkins of Alverton, using the earlier form of the third person plural, written y in the Dramas, spells it eye. Yet there are cases where the older pronunciation is retained, and probably this was always the case when the words were enclitic. Prof. Loth has pointed out a similar change in the Quiberon sub-dialect of Vannetais Breton, and that in some of the same words.
In the unscientific spelling of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that is to say, in the system of every one except Lhuyd, and occasionally of Gwavas and Tonkin when they followed Lhuyd, the English values of the period were often given to the letters; but the following were vowel symbols in general use:—
| For â of the present system | a, aa | Lhuyd â. |
| ,, a,, | a, u, e, o | ,, a. |
| ,, ê,, | ea | ,, ê. |
| ,, e,, | e, i | ,, e. |
| ,, î,, | ee | ,, î, ŷ. |
| ,, i,, | i | ,, i. |
| ,, ô, aw,, | oa, o, aw, au, ao | Lhuyd writes an inverted a or ô. |
| ,, o,, | o | Lhuyd o. |
| ,, ŏ, ŭ, ă,, | o, u, a, e | ,, ẏ. |
| ,, ŭ, ou,, | u, oo, ou | ,, ụ, û. |
| ,, ow,, | ô, ow, ou, au | ,, oụ, o, ô. |
| ,, u,, | u, oo | ,, u. |
| ,, ew, yu, eu,, | ew, yu, yw | ,, iụ, yụ, eụ. |
| ,, ŷ, ei, ay,, | y, ei, ay | ,, ei, y, ẏ. |
| ,, y,, | y, i, e | ,, y, i. |
A final e mute was often used to lengthen a vowel, as in English. Many names of places and persons retain this e mute at the present day, and when the preceding vowel is a, educated persons generally give it the sound of the English long a in mane, but that is a change analogous to the modern vulgarism of pronouncing clerk as clurk instead of clark. The proper sound of the Cornish â is still heard in such words in the mouths of the peasantry. Compare such a name as Polglaze in the two pronunciations.