Yr Afr Sanctaidd

So for Three Weeks for Dreamwidth shanaqui is hosting the FONSFAQ for Wales. (The Prompts and Claims post)

As I am learning Welsh, I offered do a basic welsh post, but before doing that I thought it would probably be helpful to do a guide to pronunciation, given that seems to be one of the things people find scariest about welsh.

Welsh has a different alphabet to English, it has letters that English doesn't (ch, dd etc) and a lot of of the letters that look the same are pronounced differently. (ie u & w). Bwrw, gŵr and sgwd are a lot easier to say when you don't try to pronounce w as in the english alphabet. (In Welsh w is a vowel)

The emphasis also falls in a different place. In any word with two or more syllables the emphasis falls on the penultimate syllable. For instance -

Fron¦cys¦yll¦te
Ys¦trad¦meu¦rig
Caer¦gu¦bi (Because the emphasis falls on the gu, the u is pronounced differently to how it is normally. More as the u in cup is pronounced).

A circumflex (ˆ) on a vowel means you lengthen the sound.

a - mam - as in apple
b - mab
c - car - hard as in cat and cot, not soft as in cereal and celery
ch - chi - as in loch
d - da
dd - dda - th as in the and leather
e - de - open as in men, but not delight
f - saf - v as veil
ff - saff - as in difference
g - gan - always a hard g as in got, not giraffe
ng - ng - as in sing
h - hon
i - ci - as ink or ee in seek, not time
j - garej
l - lan
ll - lle - My text book says “prepare to say l, then blow really hard making a sound like a dentist’s suction pipe, blowing out!” this may or may not be useful to you
m - man
n - ni
o - to, toc as in order and floor, not open
p - pen
ph - phen - as in physics
r - car - as in English but more rolling
rh - rhif - start saying the r and then say the h over it
s - saff - as in English. However si (as in siop) is always pronounced sh unless it is the word si in which case it is pronounced sea
t - ti
th - beth - as in things.
u - un - as in tree, so that pump (welsh for five) is pronounced pimp
w - pwll - as in blue and pool
y - dyn - as in bean
-- - llyn - as in pin
-- - Cymru - as in cup

ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, and th are one letter in welsh. Which is important if you ever do a welsh crossword.