Welsh orthography uses 29 letters (including eight
digraphs) of the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
to write native
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
words as well as established loanwords.
The
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(), the
grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
(), the
circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
(, , or ) and the
diaeresis mark
Diaeresis (dieresis, diëresis) may refer to:
* Diaeresis (prosody), pronunciation of vowels in a diphthong separately, or the division made in a line of poetry when the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word
* Diaeresis (linguistics), ...
() are also used on vowels, but accented letters are not regarded as part of the alphabet.
The letter ''j'' has been accepted into Welsh
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
only relatively recently: for use in those words borrowed from English in which the sound is retained in Welsh, even where that sound is not represented by ''j'' in English spelling, as in ("garage") and ("fridge"). Older borrowings of English words containing resulted in the sound being pronounced and spelt in various other ways, resulting in occasional doublets such as and ("
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
").
The letters ''k'', ''q'', ''v'', ''x'' and ''z'' are sometimes used in technical terms, like ''kilogram'', ''volt'' and ''zero'', but in all cases can be, and often are, replaced by Welsh letters: , and .
History
![Welsh alphabet card italic C19th](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Welsh_alphabet_card_italic_C19th.jpg)
The earliest samples of written Welsh date from the 6th century and are in the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
(see
Old Welsh
Old Welsh ( cy, Hen Gymraeg) is the stage of the Welsh language from about 800 AD until the early 12th century when it developed into Middle Welsh.Koch, p. 1757. The preceding period, from the time Welsh became distinct from Common Brittonic ...
). The orthography differs from that of modern Welsh, particularly in the use of ''p'', ''t'' and ''c'' to represent the
voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
plosive
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s in the middle and at the end of words. Similarly, the voiced
fricatives
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
were written with ''b'' and ''d''.
[Watkins, T. Arwyn (1993) "Welsh" in Ball, Martin J. with Fife, James (Eds) ''The Celtic Languages.'' London/New York: Routledge: 289-348.]
By the
Middle Welsh
Middle Welsh ( cy, Cymraeg Canol, wlm, Kymraec) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh ( cy, Hen G ...
period, this had given way to much variability: although ''b'', ''d'' and ''g'' were now used to represent , these sounds were also often written as in Old Welsh, while could be denoted by ''u'', ''v'', ''f'' or ''w''. In earlier manuscripts, moreover,
fricatives
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
were often not distinguished from
plosive
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s (e.g. ''t'' for , the sound now written with ''th''). The
grapheme
In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called ''graphemics' ...
''k'' was also used, unlike in the modern alphabet, particularly before
front vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherw ...
s.
The disuse of this letter is at least partly due to the publication of
William Salesbury
William Salesbury also Salusbury (c. 1520 – c. 1584) was the leading Welsh scholar of the Renaissance and the principal translator of the 1567 Welsh New Testament.
Early life
Salesbury was born some time before 1520 (possibly as early as 1 ...
's Welsh New Testament and
William Morgan's
Welsh Bible
Parts of the Bible have been translated into Welsh since at least the 15th century, but the most widely used translation of the Bible into Welsh for several centuries was the 1588 translation by William Morgan, '' Y Beibl cyssegr-lan sef Yr Hen ...
, whose English printers, with type letter frequencies set for English and Latin, did not have enough ''k'' letters in their type cases to spell every sound as ''k'', so the order went "C for K, because the printers have not so many as the Welsh requireth"; this was not liked at the time, but has become standard usage.
In this period, ''
ð'' (capitalised as ''Ð'') was also used as a letter, interchangeable with ''dd'', such as the passage in the 1567 New Testament: , which contains both ''ð'' and ''dd''. Elsewhere, the same word is spelt in different ways, e.g. and .
The printer and publisher
Lewis Jones, one of the co-founders of , the Welsh-speaking settlement in Patagonia, favoured a limited spelling reform which replaced Welsh ''f'' and ''ff'' – standing for and – with the letters ''v'' and ''f'' (as in English), and from ''circa'' 1866 to 1886 Jones employed this innovation in a number of newspapers and periodicals he published and/or edited in the colony.
However, the only real relic of this practice today is the Patagonian placename
Trevelin
Trevelin (; cy, Trefelin) is a town in the western part of the Patagonian Argentine province of Chubut. The town lies on the eastern banks of the ( es, Río Percey). It is located in the department of Futaleufú, south of Esquel, and had 6,3 ...
("mill town"), which in standard Welsh orthography would be .
In 1928 a committee chaired by Sir
John Morris-Jones
Sir John Morris-Jones (17 October 1864 – 16 April 1929) was a Welsh grammarian, academic and Welsh-language poet.
Morris-Jones was born John Jones, at Trefor in the parish of Llandrygarn, Anglesey the son of Morris Jones first a schoolmaster ...
standardised the orthography of modern Welsh.
In 1987, a committee chaired by Professor Stephen J. Williams made further small changes, introducing a
'' j''. The conventions established by these committees are not adhered to by all modern writers.
Letter names and sound values
"N" and "S" indicate variants specific to the northern and southern dialects of Welsh. Throughout Wales an alternative system is also in use in which all consonant letters are named using the corresponding consonant sound plus a
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
(e.g. for ). In this system the vowels are named as below.
:
;Notes
Diphthongs
:
Diacritics
Welsh makes use of a number of
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s.
The
circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
(ˆ) is mostly used to mark
long vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
, so ''â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ'' are always long. However, not all long vowels are marked with a circumflex, so the letters ''a, e, i, o, u, w, y'' with no circumflex do not necessarily represent short vowels; see .
The
grave accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian and many other western European languages, as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using t ...
(`) is sometimes used, usually in words borrowed from another language, to mark vowels that are short when a long vowel would normally be expected, e.g. (a cough), (a pass/permit or a lift in a car); (smoke), (a mug).
The
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(´) is sometimes used to mark a stressed final syllable in a polysyllabic word. Thus the words (to empty) and (decline) have final stress. However, not all polysyllabic words with final stress are marked with the acute accent ( "Welsh" and "forward/onward", for example, are written with none). The acute may also be used to indicate that a letter ''w'' represents a vowel where a glide might otherwise be expected, e.g. (two syllables) "manly", as opposed to (one syllable) "root".
Similarly, the
diaeresis (¨) is used to indicate that two adjoining vowels are to be pronounced separately (not as a diphthong). However, it is also used to show that the letter ''i'' is used to represent the cluster which is always followed by another vowel, e.g. (to copy) pronounced , not .
The grave and acute accents in particular are very often omitted in casual writing, and the same is true to a lesser extent of the diaeresis. The circumflex, however, is usually included. Accented vowels are not considered distinct letters for the purpose of collation.
Predicting vowel length from orthography
As mentioned above, vowels marked with the circumflex are always long, and those marked with the grave accent are always short. If a vowel is not marked with a diacritic, its length must be determined by its environment; the rules vary a bit according to dialect.
In all dialects, only stressed vowels may be long; unstressed vowels are always short.
An unmarked (stressed) vowel is long:
* in the last syllable of a word when no consonant follows: (good).
* before
voiced stop
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s ''b'', ''d'', ''g'' and before all
fricatives
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
(except for ''ll'') ''ch'', ''dd'', ''f'', ''ff'', ''th'', ''s'': (son), (favourite), (thing), (night).
An unmarked vowel is short:
* in an unstressed (
proclitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
) word: .
* before ''p'', ''t'', ''c'', ''ng'': (gate), (sheepfold), (ship)
* before most
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s: (saint), (hedge), (April).
The vowel ''y'', when it is pronounced , is always short even when it appears in an environment where other vowels would be long: (whole) . When pronounced as a
close
Close may refer to:
Music
* ''Close'' (Kim Wilde album), 1988
* ''Close'' (Marvin Sapp album), 2017
* ''Close'' (Sean Bonniwell album), 1969
* "Close" (Sub Focus song), 2014
* "Close" (Nick Jonas song), 2016
* "Close" (Rae Sremmurd song), 201 ...
or
near-close vowel
A near-close vowel or a near-high vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. ...
( or in the North, or in the South), ''y'' follows the same rules as other vowels: (day) (North) ~ (South), (wind) (North) ~ (South).
Before ''l'', ''m'', ''n'', and ''r'', unmarked vowels are long in some words and short in others:
:
(The last four examples are given in South Welsh pronunciation only since vowels in nonfinal syllables are always short in North Welsh.)
Before ''nn'' and ''rr'', vowels are always short: (ash trees), (to win), (stone).
In Northern dialects, long vowels are stressed and appear in the final syllable of the word. Vowels in non-final syllables are always short. In addition to the rules above, a vowel is long in the North before a consonant cluster beginning with ''s'': (witness). Before ''ll'', a vowel is short when no consonant follows the ''ll'': (better) It is long when another consonant does follow the ''ll'': (hair).
In Southern dialects, long vowels may appear in a stressed
penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
imate syllable as well as in a stressed word-final syllable. Before ''ll'', a stressed vowel in the last syllable can be either long (e.g. "better" ) or short (e.g. "hole" ). However, a stressed vowel in the
penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
before ''ll'' is always short: (clothes).
Before ''s'', a stressed vowel in the last syllable is long, as mentioned above, but a stressed vowel in the penult is short: (measure) . Vowels are always short before consonant clusters: (saint), (hair), (witness).
Digraphs
While the
digraphs ''ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th'' are each written with two symbols, they are all considered to be single letters. This means, for example that (a town in South Wales) is considered to have only six letters in Welsh, compared to eight letters in English. Consequently, they each take up only a single space in Welsh
crossword
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answ ...
s. ''Ll'' itself had actually been written as a
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
in Middle Welsh.
Sorting is done in correspondence with the alphabet. For example, comes before , which comes before , which comes before . Automated sorting may occasionally be complicated by the fact that additional information may be needed to distinguish a genuine digraph from a juxtaposition of letters; for example comes after (in which the stands for ) but before (in which ''n'' and ''g'' are pronounced separately as ).
Although the digraphs above are considered to be single letters, only their first component letter is capitalised when a word in lower case requires an initial capital letter. Thus:
: , etc. (place names)
: , etc. (personal names)
: (other sentences starting with a digraph)
The two letters in a digraph are both capitalised only when the whole word is in uppercase:
: (as on a poster or sign)
The status of the digraphs as single letters is reflected in the stylised forms used in the logos of the
National Library of Waleslogo and
Cardiff University
, latin_name =
, image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg
, image_size = 150px
, caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University
, motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord
, mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord
, established = 1 ...
(
logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...
).
See also
*
Bardic Alphabet
*
Welsh Braille
Welsh Braille is the braille alphabet of the Welsh language. It uses one of the Grade- shortcuts of English Braille, ''ch'', but otherwise print digraphs in the Welsh alphabet are digraphs in braille as well:
: ''dd'', ''ff'', ''ng'', ''ll'', ...
References
External links
Type Welsh characters onlineWelsh pronunciation course with audio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Welsh orthography
Orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
Indo-European Latin-script orthographies