Welsh language writing system Latin script
Orthography
Welsh is written in a Latin alphabet of 29 letters, of which eight are digraphs treated as separate letters for collation:a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, yIn contrast to English practice, ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are considered vowel letters in Welsh along with ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩.
⟨j⟩ was not used traditionally, but is now used in many everyday words borrowed from English, like jam ('jam'), jôc ('joke') and garej ('garage'). ⟨k, q, v, x, z⟩ are used in some technical terms, like kilogram, volt and zero, but in all cases can be, and often are, replaced by Welsh letters: cilogram, folt and sero. ⟨k⟩ was in common use until the 16th century, but was dropped at the time of the publication of the New Testament in Welsh, as William Salesbury explained: "⟨c⟩ for ⟨k⟩, because the printers have not so many as the Welsh requireth". This change was not popular at the time.The most common diacritic is the circumflex, which usually disambiguates long vowels, most often in the case of homographs, where the vowel is short in one word and long in the other: e.g. man ('place') vs mân ('fine, small').
Script Alphabet Orthography Characters Writing scheme