Sounds and pronunciation of the Welsh language
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The
phonology
of
Welsh
is characterised by a number of sounds that do not occur in
English
and are rare in
European languages
, such as the
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
[?]
and several
voiceless sonorants
(
nasals
and
liquids
), some of which result from
consonant mutation
.
Stress
usually falls on the
penultimate syllable
in polysyllabic words, while the word-final unstressed syllable receives a higher
pitch
than the stressed syllable.
Consonants
[
edit
]
Welsh has the following
consonant
phonemes
:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
Symbols in parentheses are either
allophones
, or found only in
loanwords
. The sound
/z/
generally occurs in loanwords, e.g.
s?
/zuː/
('zoo'), although this is usually realised as
/s/
in
northern accents
, e.g.
/suː/
. The postalveolar affricates
/t?/
and
/d?/
occur mainly in loanwords, e.g.
tsips
/t??ps/
('chips') and
jeli
/?d??li/
('
jelly
'), but also in some dialects as developments from
/tj/
and
/dj/
, e.g.
/d?aul/
from
diafol
/?djav?l/
('devil'). The
voiceless nasals
/m?
n?
ŋ?/
occur mostly word-initially, as a consequence of
nasal mutation
[
disambiguation needed
]
. These nasals have recently been interpreted as sequences of
/m
n
ŋ/
+
/h/
.
[7]
[8]
Initial
/χw/
is colloquially realised as
[?]
in the south, e.g.
chwech
/χweːχ/
('six') pronounced
[?eːχ]
.
[c]
results from
/j/
when preceded by
/h/
, often as a result of
h
-prothesis
of the radical word, e.g.
iaith
/jai?θ/
'language' becomes
ei hiaith
[?i
cai?θ]
'her language'.
[9]
The stops
/p
t
k/
are distinguished from
/b
d
?/
by means of
aspiration
more consistently than by
voicing
, as
/b
d
?/
are actually devoiced in most contexts. This devoiced nature is recognised in the spelling of
/sp
sk/
as
⟨sb sg⟩
, although
/st/
is
orthographically
⟨st⟩
for historical reasons.
The fricatives
/v
ð/
tend not to be pronounced in certain contexts, e.g.
nesaf
/n?sav/
('next') realised as
/?n?sa/
or
i fyny
/iː
?v?n?/
('up') from
mynydd
/m?n?ð,
m?n?ð/
('mountain'). Historically, this occurred so often with the
voiced velar fricative
that it disappeared entirely from the language. The occurrence and distribution of the phoneme
/?/
varies from area to area. Very few native words are pronounced with
/?/
by all speakers, e.g.
siarad
/??arad/
('talk'), although it appears in borrowings, e.g.
siop
/??p/
('shop'). In northern accents, it can occur when
/s/
precedes
/iː
j/
, e.g.
es i
/?eː?
i/
('I went'). In some
southern dialects
it is produced when
/s/
follows
/?/
or
/iː/
, e.g.
mis
/miː?/
('month'). The voiceless fricative
/χ/
is realised as uvular except by some southwestern speakers, who produce the sound in the velar region as
[x]
.
The
/r/
phoneme is reportedly pronounced as the
voiced uvular fricative
[?]
by some speakers in
Dyfed
and
Gwynedd
, in a pronunciation known as
tafod tew
('thick tongue').
[10]
In some dialects of north-western Welsh, the
/l/
phoneme is consistently
velarised
or "dark" (
[?]
, not to be confused with
[?]
) in all positions,
[
citation needed
]
but remains unvelarised or "clear" (
[l]
) in the south, except in rare exceptions where
[?]
is found after
/d/
, e.g.
dlos
[d?os]
'pretty'.
Vowels
[
edit
]
The
vowel
phonemes of Welsh are as follows:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
The vowels
/??/
and
/?ː/
merged with
/?/
and
/iː/
in southern dialects, but are retained in northern dialects. In all dialects, the contrast between long and short vowels is found in stressed penultimate syllables of polysyllabic words or in monosyllabic words. Word-final vowels show a contrast between
vowel quality
rather than
length
proper, e.g.
ysbyty
/?s?b?.tiː/
is realised as
[?s?p?.ti]
with final short
[i]
rather than with final long
[iː]
.
The vowel
/?/
does not occur in the final syllable of words (except a few monosyllabic
proclitics
). It is always pronounced short except when emphasised in the name of the letter
y
.
[11]
The long counterpart to short
/a/
is sometimes misleadingly transcribed
/?/
. This is often found in solely quality-distinctive transcriptions to avoid using a length mark. The actual pronunciation of long
/a/
is
[aː]
, which makes the vowel pair unique in that there is no significant quality difference. Regional realisations of
/aː/
may be
[æː]
or
[?ː]
in north-central and (decreasingly) south-eastern
Wales
or sporadically as
[?ː]
in some southern areas undoubtedly under the influence of English.
[11]
Diphthongs
|
Second component
|
First component
|
front
|
central
|
back
|
close
|
?i
|
??
|
?u,
?u
|
mid
|
?i/?i,
?i
|
??/??,
??
|
?u/?u,
?u
|
open
|
ai
|
a?,
aː?
|
au
|
The diphthongs containing
/?/
occur only in northern dialects; in southern dialects
/??/
is replaced by
/?i/
and
/?u,
??~??,
??,
a(ː)?/
are merged with
/?u,
?i~?i,
?i,
ai/
. There is a general tendency in the South to simplify diphthongs in
everyday speech
, e.g. Northern
/?waː?θ/
corresponding to
/?waːθ/
in the South, or Northern
/?w?iθj?/
and Southern
/?wiθ?/
.
Stress and pitch
[
edit
]
Stress
in polysyllabic words occurs most commonly on the
penultimate
syllable
, more rarely on the final syllable (e.g. verbs ending in -au).
[12]
Exceptions can arise in relation to borrowings from foreign words, such as
ambiwlans
and
testament
(both stressed on the first syllable). According to its positioning, related words or concepts (or even
plurals
) can sound quite different, as syllables are added to the end of a word and the stress moves correspondingly:
Word
|
Pronunciation
|
Meaning
|
ysgrif
|
/??s?r?v/
|
"article, essay"
|
ysgrifen
|
/?s??riv?n/
|
"writing"
|
ysgrifennydd
|
/?s?r??v?n?ð/
|
"secretary"
|
ysgrifenyddes
|
/?s?r?v?n??ð?s/
|
"female secretary"
|
ysgrifenyddesau
|
/?s?r?v?n?ð??sai/
|
"female secretaries"
|
Note also how adding a syllable to
ysgrifennydd
to form
ysgrifenyddes
changes the pronunciation of the second
⟨y⟩
. This is because the pronunciation of
⟨y⟩
depends on whether or not it is in the final syllable.
Stress on penultimate syllables is characterised by a low
pitch
, which is followed by a high pitch on the (unstressed) word-final syllable. In words where stress is on the final syllable, that syllable also bears the high pitch.
[12]
This high pitch is a remnant of the high-pitched word-final stress of early
Old Welsh
(derived from original penultimate stress in
Common Brittonic
by the loss of final syllables); the stress shift from final to penultimate occurred in the Old Welsh period without affecting the overall pitch of the word.
[13]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
Ball, Martin J. (1984). "Phonetics for phonology". In Ball, M. J.; Jones, G. E. (eds.).
Welsh Phonology: Selected Readings
. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 5?39.
ISBN
0-7083-0861-9
.
- ^
a
b
King, Gareth (1996). "Sounds and Spelling".
Modern Welsh, A Comprehensive Grammar
. London: Routledge. pp. 3?15.
ISBN
978-1-138-82630-4
.
- ^
a
b
Jones, John (1913). "Phonology".
A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative
. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 9?188. pibn 1000706503.
- ^
a
b
Stephen J. Williams (1980). "Phonology".
A Welsh Grammar
. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. pp. 1?5.
ISBN
0-7083-0737-X
.
- ^
a
b
Liu, Zirui (2018). "Background on the Welsh language".
Phonetics of Southern Welsh Stress
. London: University College London. p. 5.
- ^
a
b
Hannahs, S. J. (2013). "A Survey of Welsh Phonetics".
The Phonology of Welsh
. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 21?22.
ISBN
978-0-19-960123-3
.
- ^
Hammond, Michael (January 2019).
"Voiceless Nasals in Welsh"
.
Journal of Celtic Linguistics
.
20
(1): 31?60.
doi
:
10.16922/jcl.20.3
.
S2CID
165438641
.
- ^
Bell, Elise (2023).
"Northern Welsh"
.
Journal of the International Phonetic Association
.
53
(2): 7.
doi
:
10.1017/S0025100321000165
.
- ^
Watkins, T. Arwyn (1993). "Welsh". In Ball, Martin J. (ed.).
The Celtic Languages
. London: Routledge. pp. 300?301.
ISBN
0-415-01035-7
.
- ^
Wells, John C. (1982).
Accents of English
. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 390.
ISBN
0-521-28540-2
.
- ^
a
b
Wmffre, Iwan (2013).
The Qualities and the Origins of the Welsh Vowel [?ː]
. Berlin: Curach Bhan Publications. p. 3.
ISBN
9783942002127
.
OCLC
910913657
.
- ^
a
b
Williams, Briony Jane (September 1983).
Stress in Modern Welsh
(Ph.D. thesis). University of Cambridge.
doi
:
10.17863/CAM.16507
.
hdl
:
1810/250821
.
- ^
Willis, David.
"Old and Middle Welsh"
(PDF)
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 2011-09-27.