Talk:Welsh orthography

message: The letters i, u and y are given the names î, û and ŷ. In a Southern dialect these are apparently all pronounced , and in a Northern dialect only î is distinct (unless I misunderstand the relationship between the [iː~ɨː] and [ə] variants of y). So ... how do Well speakers say the differences if they're spelling a word or whatever? —Felix the Cassowary 14:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Y represents four different sounds (if you include long and short variants) in all dialects: , ,  and  in the north and , ,  and  in the south; but the last sound is used as the letter name.  So the three letters i, u y are called  ,  and  in the north, while in the south the first two are both . Sometimes u is called u bedol ("horseshoe u") to distinguish it from i.  In fact, I've even heard a northerner call it that, quite unnecessarily. garik 16:08, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks, I've added this information to the article. —Felix the Cassowary 02:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''i'' vs ''u'' vs ''y'' 

message: Does Welsh have the digraph nn. 19:40, 5 January 2008 Homa Alona (Talk | contribs)
Yes, it does. —Angr 07:37, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Nn (digraph)|NN]] in Welsh 

message: Ok it might not be a 'traditional' letter but shouldn't we include J in the actual alphabet? I notice the alphabets that adorn classroom walls in Welsh schools always contain J. (How else would the kids learn to spell jam, jeli and jigso?) If that's what the young Welsh speakers of today use, shouldn't we include it here? Llusiduonbach (talk) 09:31, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's mentioned under "Other letters", but maybe it should be in the table at the top too. —Angr 09:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added j to the alphabet as it's been used and taught as a Welsh letter for years. Would like to add any references as to when in the last century it was first "approved" or started being used in schools. Llusiduonbach (talk) 10:51, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

text: The rest of the article implies there's 29 letters, and I have a source with 29, so I'm going to go ahead and change 28 to 29. Joseph2302 (talk) 17:38, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: ffrij (fridge) is used as an example of an english word used in Welsh, but Welsh already has a perfectly good word for fridge, that being rhewgell! 80.229.162.156 (talk) 10:40, 17 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  No J in the Welsh alphabet? 

message: Why are the digraphs "mh", "nh" and "ngh" not listed in the table under "Letter Names and Sound Values"?  These are digraphs that each represent a single sound. (They represent the three voiceless nasals, as described in a footnote for "h" in the table.)  My guess is that they are not listed because no words start with them.  I think they should be added, but that a user who is more knowledgeable about Welsh should be the one to do it.
Alfrogbet (talk) 21:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: They're not listed because they aren't considered individual letters, the way ch, dd, ng, ll, ph, rh, and th are. Orthographically, these are just m + h, n + h, and ng + h. +Angr 08:56, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  What this guy said. The Welsh digraphs nh, mh, and ngh are not in the alphabet just as th, sh, ch, qu are not in the English alphabet. It doesn't matter why, it just matters that they aren't. – Dyolf87 (talk) 18:53, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voiceless Nasal Digraphs 

message: Can we qualify which "English" we use in the examples. Cambrian English, American English, some variety of English spoken in England? As a native speaker of the English as spoken in the North Midlands of England (Derbyshire-Staffs hybrid), I have difficulty relating the example "hawk" to /oː/. Is its realisation actually [ɔː] in Welsh? Is a phoneme-vs-realisation distinction confusing me here? Or is it that an AmE pronunciation of Eng "hawk" being used as a basis?
I suspect I myself might produce [oː] in "hole" in my own English English, although I'm dangerously close to parts of North Staffs where (urban) speakers may produce something like //oː// -> [εw] so I have to watch myself. (Who knows, Welsh influence in the cities of N Staffs.)
This question then spreads over into the Welsh phonology article where matters of _realisation_ need to be treated.CecilWard (talk) 11:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "Hawk" really isn't a good example word for Welsh /o:/. It certainly isn't based on American English, whose pronunciation of "hawk" is even less /o:/-like than most British pronunciations. (For many North Americans, it's , homophonous with hock.) A better example would be "stove" in Scottish English, West/Central Canadian English or North Central American English. The Welsh phonology article makes no attempt to compare the sounds of Welsh with "similar sounds" in English at all, and I think it's better that way, but then I'm a trained phonologist to whom the table and the figure at Welsh phonology#Vowels are understandable; I can't assume that's true of all interested readers, though. +Angr 17:24, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "English" sound examples 

message: Are Abbreviations and acronyms of words that use digraphs always keeping the digraph? For example if I abbreviate "Ffilmau Cymru" would it be FfC or FFC or FC?   Can someone who knows this answer put some more detail in the digraph section? Thanks  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.88.170.40 (talk) 19:49, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The first one (FfC), see random example here at top of page of LlCC (Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru) http://www.funkydragon.org.uk/cy/fe/page.asp?n1=1105&n2=2109&n3=1865&n4=792. Llusiduonbach (talk) 11:15, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abbreviations with digraphs 

message: How are words like cefn and llyfr pronounced? I think I remember reading that they're /kɛvɛn/, /ɬəvɨɾ/, etc (i.e. as if the letter in the penult were repeated), but I thought I'd better check that was actually true before putting it in the article. Is it still true if the previous syllable contains a diphthong, for example? --88.110.12.203 (talk) 21:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There's some variation, which I'd guess is mainly regionally based.  Some people pronounce them with an inserted vowel, but some speakers would say /kɛvn/ or /ɬɨvɾ/.  And you'd never have a diphthong inserted; at least I can't think of a case. garik (talk) 21:30, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: But what would you do if a diphthong preceded the cluster? How would you pronounce brawdr if you actually pronounced the r? I know that's a bad example because in real life it became brawd, but hypothetically if the r had stayed, what would the epenthetic vowel between the d and the r be? +Angr 21:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd pronounce that as if spelt brawdwr (/ˈbraudʊr/); I'm almost certain no native speaker would pronounce it /braudaur/. I've also managed to come up with a real example: lleidr ("thief"), which I'd pronounce /ˈɬeidɪr/.  This suggests to me that the rule (at least in my Welsh, which is from Gwynedd, although possibly messed up by a decade of living outside Wales) is to insert a short vowel similar to the second part of the diphthong.  Though I'll have to think of more examples; /ˈɬeid(ə)r/, incidentally, also sounds ok to me.  garik (talk) 22:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think, incidentally, that I tend to insert a vowel after stops, but not usually after fricatives. /ˈkɛvɛn/ and /ˈɬəvɨɾ/ sound rather southern to me (the first in particular). garik (talk) 22:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

text: Something like /ˈɬeidɪr/ sounds to me (north-east coalfield) like a woolly wild western accent.  If you get an intrusive vowel at all along the Marches, I'd say it was a schwa, although it becomes an /ɑ/ as you go west towards the Clwyd.  And an intrusive vowel in the likes of cefn and llyfr would be very unlikely for us: you can do the regional location by listening to the way place names are pronounced: Cefn Mawr, Cefn y Bedd, but Traeth Cefen Shidan.Dan Dean (talk) 08:42, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syllables with no written vowel 

message: I've often been confused about whether e.g. Llanelli or LLanelli is correct, so it is good to find a definitive rule stated in this article, albeit without a reference (which would be an improvement). I wonder if it might also be worth noting that the same principle of digraph capitalization applies in Spanish (although the orthographies are probably unrelated), as one does see the odd word written LLa... ? (See Spanish orthography, which also lacks a reference but at least cites the relevant authority.) Also, perhaps it's worth noting that Unicode contains a "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER MIDDLE-WELSH LL" which implies that LLa... used to be the correct way to write it some centuries ago? --Ozaru (talk) 16:53, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capital digraphs 

message: It's clear that Q isn't in the Welsh alphabet, but it's also not mentioned like j, k, v, x, and z are, so it's not clear if it could be used in technical terms, words borrowed from other languages, etc. M-1 (talk) 09:12, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not aware of any borrowed words in Welsh spelt with a Q (and there are certainly no native ones). I'd say that borrowed words are always respelt with C or CW (e.g. Irac, cwarc). garik (talk) 19:39, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed. Welsh contains no native words beginning with the sound  (the sound of English ) because the sound  changed to  in the development from Proto-Celtic to Brythonic. This is why you'll see a  or  in Welsh words where Irish has  (cf. mab (Welsh) and mac (Irish) meaning 'son'), etc. Consequently, Welsh has no  because it had no need for it! When Welsh borrowed words from English which begin with  they are transcribed as , for example question becomes cwestiwn. – Dyolf87 (talk) 07:50, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Q? 

message: "/ɪu/ not present in English; closest to 'i-oo' (short i)" # When I see /ɪu/ I think of, say, /ɪuθ/ youth. Might this better be rendered /iʊ/? If so does anybody have a cite for it? (EDIT: Forgot to put the four tildes…whoops…) Brownie Charles (talk) 22:06, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The word youth is pronounced /juːθ/ in English, not dipthongized. [Though in a typical south Welsh accent the combination /juː/ does often become /ɪu/ -- I'm thinking of words like cute, tube, pure etc.] The sound /ʊ/ is that in foot; the sound we're looking for is closer to that of boot, which is /u/. Gareth (talk) 04:47, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question on Diphthong 

message: The phonetics of the letters on the table are completely different from the Welsh alphabet. A lot of it seems informal. Some letters are different in the south and north (In the south they say "ec" whereas we'd say "cy"), and this lists only the south variants. For example, I don't think in the south they would say "bi" instead of "by", "ech" instead of "ch", "di" instead of "dy" and so on. The term "i dot" is a nickname for a lowercase "i", and in the alphabet would never be said like that. If anyone could edit the table, since I wouldn't be able to get the right letters for phonetics.
--ConCass (talk) 23:18, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid you're wrong on several counts. In the north we certainly do say "a bi ec ech" etc. In  fact, the difference between that and "a by cy chy" etc. is more one of formality than anything else. Both sets of letter names are used by Welsh speakers from all over Wales. Also, while "i dot" is indeed a nickname for lowercase i, it is sometimes used in South Wales to distinguish it from u. garik (talk) 17:26, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It is worth mentioning the "a by cy chy" system, however. garik (talk) 17:32, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternate Letter Pronunciations 

message: What are the Welsh names of accent acute, accent grave, accent diaeresis and accent trema?--31.17.153.69 (talk) 09:34, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: acute accent = acen ddyrchafedig, grave accent = acen ddisgynedig, diaeresis/trema = didolnod. garik (talk) 19:10, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much!--31.17.153.69 (talk) 16:40, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accent names? 

message: I don't get why Ph is in the welsh alphabet,this has really bug me and here why; when you get the same sound from ff; unlike dd and th, where they have two different "th" sound; no welsh dictionaries, apart from the Collins Spurrell, which if you have both an old and new, has a few ph entries, on the welsh side do, yet if you check the English side, they don't give the ph entry; they are words with: ngh, mh and nh and all three are mutated letters, so they should count as digprahs e.g in bridgend = yn mhen y bont, I would count mhen as three letters: mh e n; then they are with ph in welsh; even through dd and ng can't be find at the beginning of a word you do find plenty of words with, dd and ng in the middle or at the end.Japhes600,000 (talk) 14:24, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: ph occurs in Welsh only as the result of aspirate mutation of p, so in Modern Welsh it only ever occurs at the start of a word, and only ever when that word has been mutated, as in ffwr a phlu ("fur and feathers", where phlu is a mutated form of plu).  In the past, ph was occasionally used to spell words borrowed from Greek, so some dictionaries include words like philosophi, but now these words are pretty much always spelt with ff, as in ffilosoffi. (Or athroniaeth, of course!) garik (talk) 14:40, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

text: I presume it's in the alphabet because it was historically used in words borrowed from Greek (now all spelt with ff). garik (talk) 17:21, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is Ph in the welsh alphabet 

message: You have e as in, hen, short but in, hey, long, but when I was in school, which was in wales, I heard it as, air, like say the word; ble as blair, as in Tony Blair. Japhes600,000 (talk) 16:59, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I pronounce it more openly too, and would be interested to know the distribution of open and closed vowels in varieties of Welsh. But this is a matter of reliable sources. garik (talk) 17:21, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I know /eː, oː/ tend to more open [ɛː, ɔː] in the north-west, so Blair and ble would sound the same (if the r isn't pronounced). I'm a southerner and I only realised recently that I don't pronounce ble as [bleː], but closer, like [ble̝ː] or [blɪː] or something. Llusiduonbach (talk) 11:05, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  I heard, the long e, said more like, air. 

message: Given that the digraphs ch, dd, ff, ng, ph, rh and th generally appear in written Welsh as Ch, Dd, Ff, Ng, Ph, Rh, and Th if they appear at the start of a sentence or form the start of a proper noun, should they not also appear in the table of majuscule forms, which opens the article, in that form rather than simply as CH, DD, FF, NG, PH, RH and TH - forms that they would only appear in if every letter in the word or sentence was in upper case.
cheers Geopersona (talk) 12:03, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed and changed. It's an occasional hypercorrection for both native speakers and learners to write Llanelli as LLanelli. Llusiduonbach (talk) 11:10, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

text: What about  and  which should never appear capitalised because they don't begin any radical Welsh words! They only appear as a result of mutation which means there is always a preceding word which triggers the mutation – therefore, in Welsh,  and  don't appear. – Dyolf87 (talk) 07:01, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table of majuscule forms 

message: Need an English example for /ɔʊ/ in the diphthong table if anyone can think of one. Llusiduonbach (talk) 11:25, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe you mean /ɔu/. There are three examples - throw, Owen and owe. – Dyolf87 (talk) 06:58, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  /ɔʊ/ 

message: The chart just says "w", not how it is pronounced. Is it "double-u" like in English? Or "oo"? Or something else? Rmhermen (talk) 00:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the  entry on Wiktionary, it's , so basically oo. It's a vowel, and the name of a vowel is often one of the sounds the vowel makes. — Eru·tuon 21:25, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

text: In Welsh, the letter  is a semi-vowel. That is to say that it can represent a vowel-sound or a consonant-sound, just like the letter  in English where it is the consonant  in yellow and the vowel  in cherry. In Welsh,  can be the consonant  in words like weld (mutated form of gweld) but the vowels  or  in words like dŵr (long vowels are not always marked by a circumflex (ˆ)). – Dyolf87 (talk) 07:13, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Letter name of ''w'' 

message: I believe that the statement
:in Y Wladfa, the Welsh settlement in Patagonia, v is used generally to represent the sound /v/
is too bald. 
'v' was used for /v/ and 'f' for /f/ (in place of the usual Welsh 'f' and 'ff') in a number of periodicals published in y Wladfa between 1868 and 1898 — as the result of the idiosyncratic preferences of the editor Lewis Jones (he used these spellings in Wales too), but apart from a very few isolated instances (such as the placename Trevelin), the practice has, AFAIK, entirely died out since that time. -- Picapica (talk) 04:41, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yn y Wladfa 

message: In the letter names and sound values section, it says the letter P represents the sound p, but it lists pet as the English example. In some accents of English pet is pronounced pɛt, but in many it is pronounced pʰɛt. Should this be changed to a word that is always pronounced p in English? Ravenclawjedi42 (talk) 01:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: and  are not separate phonemes in either English or Welsh. In both languages, the phoneme  is realized as  in word-initial position and in the onset of a stressed syllable, but as unaspirated  in most other positions. It makes sense then to say that Welsh p is pronounced like English p as they have almost the same distribution of allophones. And anyway, this page is about Welsh orthography, not Welsh phonology, so there's no need to go into fine detail about the phonology of either language here. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  P example in English