The
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
of
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 ...
is characterised by a number of sounds that do not occur in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and are rare in
European languages
Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Rom ...
, such as the
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , ...
and several
voiceless sonorants (
nasals
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...
and
liquids
A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, an ...
), some of which result from
consonant mutation
Consonant mutation is change in a consonant in a word according to its morphological or syntactic environment.
Mutation occurs in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of al ...
.
Stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
usually falls on the
penultimate syllable in polysyllabic words, while the word-final unstressed syllable receives a higher
pitch than the stressed syllable.
Consonants
Welsh has the following
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s:
Symbols in parentheses are either
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
s, or found only in
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s. The sound generally occurs in loanwords, e.g. ''sŵ'' ('zoo'), although this is usually realised as in
northern accents, e.g. . The postalveolar affricates and occur mainly in loanwords, e.g. ('chips') and ('
jelly'), but also in some dialects as developments from and , e.g. from ('devil'). The
voiceless nasals occur mostly word-initially, as a consequence of
nasal mutation The morphology of the Welsh language has many characteristics likely to be unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scott ...
. Initial (or ) is colloquially realised as in the south, e.g. ('six') pronounced .
results from when preceded by , often as a result of
''h''-prothesis of the radical word, e.g. 'language' becomes 'her language'.
It also occurs in some Northern dialects as the cluster in place of intervocalic in words like ('out') where it is pronounced rather than the more common (and standard) .
The stops are distinguished from by means of
aspiration more consistently than by
voicing, as are actually devoiced in most contexts. This devoiced nature is recognised in the spelling of as , although is
orthographically
An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word, word breaks, Emphasis (typography), emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the ...
for historical reasons.
The fricatives tend not to be pronounced in certain contexts, e.g. ('next') realised as or ('up') from ('mountain'). Historically, this occurred so often with the
voiced velar fricative
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , ...
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. ('talk'), although it appears in borrowings, e.g. ('shop'). In northern accents, it can occur when precedes , e.g. ('I went'). In some
southern dialects it is produced when follows or , e.g. ('month'). The voiceless fricative is realised as uvular except by some southwestern speakers, who produce the sound in the velar region as .
The phoneme is reportedly pronounced as the
voiced uvular fricative
The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , an inverted small uppercase letter , or in broad transcription if rhot ...
by some speakers in
Dyfed
Dyfed () is a preserved county in southwestern Wales. It is a mostly rural area with a coastline on the Irish Sea and the Bristol Channel.
Between 1974 and 1996, Dyfed was also the name of the area's county council and the name remains in use f ...
and
Gwynedd
Gwynedd (; ) is a county and preserved county (latter with differing boundaries; includes the Isle of Anglesey) in the north-west of Wales. It shares borders with Powys, Conwy County Borough, Denbighshire, Anglesey over the Menai Strait, and C ...
, in a pronunciation known as ('thick tongue').
In some dialects of north-western Welsh, the phoneme is consistently
velarised or "dark" (, not to be confused with ) in all positions, but remains unvelarised or "clear" () in the south, except in rare exceptions where is found after , e.g. 'pretty'.
Vowels
![Welsh vowel chart](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Welsh_vowel_chart.svg)
The
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
phonemes of Welsh are as follows:
The vowels and merged with and 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
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
rather than
length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
proper, e.g. is realised as with final short rather than with final long .
The vowel does not occur in the final syllable of words (except a few monosyllabic
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 wo ...
s). It is always pronounced short except when emphasised in the name of the letter .
The long counterpart to short is sometimes misleadingly transcribed . This is often found in solely quality-distinctive transcriptions to avoid using a length mark. The actual pronunciation of long is , which makes the vowel pair unique in that there is no significant quality difference. Regional realisations of may be or in north-central and (decreasingly) south-eastern
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
or sporadically as in some southern areas undoubtedly under the influence of English.
The diphthongs containing occur only in northern dialects; in southern dialects is replaced by and are merged with . There is a general tendency in the South to simplify diphthongs in
everyday speech, e.g. Northern corresponding to in the South, or Northern and Southern .
Stress and pitch
Stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
in polysyllabic words occurs most commonly on the
penultimate
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 ...
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
, more rarely on the final syllable (e.g. verbs ending in -áu).
Exceptions can arise in relation to borrowings from foreign words, such as and (both stressed on the first syllable). According to its positioning, related words or concepts (or even
plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
s) can sound quite different, as syllables are added to the end of a word and the stress moves correspondingly:
Note also how adding a syllable to to form changes the pronunciation of the second . This is because the pronunciation of 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.
This high pitch is a remnant of the high-pitched word-final stress of early
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 ...
(derived from original penultimate stress in
Common Brittonic
Common Brittonic ( cy, Brythoneg; kw, Brythonek; br, Predeneg), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany.
It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a ...
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.
Old and Middle Welsh
David Willis, University of Cambridge
See also
* Welsh orthography
Welsh orthography uses 29 letters (including eight digraphs) of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as established loanwords.
The acute accent (), the grave accent (), the circumflex (, , or ) and the diaeresis mark () are al ...
References
{{Language phonologies
Welsh grammar
Celtic phonologies