Welsh phonology

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
Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:

Symbols in parentheses are either allophones, or found only in loanwords. The sound  generally occurs in loanwords, e.g. sw  ('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. 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  for historical reasons.

The fricatives  may also be devoiced in some contexts, but are distinguished from  by having a shorter frication length than the latter. There is a tendency in the spoken language not to pronounce these voiced fricatives in certain contexts, e.g.   ('next') realised as  or   ('up') from   ('mountain'). Historically, this occurred so often with the voiced velar fricative that it disappeared entirely from the language. Some speakers realise the voiceless lateral fricative  as a voiceless palatal fricative  in some or all contexts. 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  or , 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 a voiced uvular fricative by some speakers in Dyfed and Gwynedd, in a pronunciation known as tafod tew ('thick tongue').

In northern Welsh, the alveolar lateral approximant is consistently velarised or "dark" in all positions, but remains unvelarised or "clear" in the south.

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Welsh are as follows:

The vowels  and  survive from Old Welsh only in northern dialects; in southern dialects, these vowels have become  and  respectively. In all dialects, the contrast between long and short vowels is found in stressed word-final syllables (mainly monosyllabic words), whereas in some southern dialects, the contrast is found in stressed non-word-final syllables in addition.

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 .

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 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 ,  are merged with , 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 in polysyllabic words occurs most commonly on the penultimate syllable, 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 plurals) can sound quite different, as syllables are added to the end of a word and the stress moves correspondingly:

{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
| style="text-align: left;" | || style="text-align: left;" | || style="text-align: left;" |
|-
| 
| style="text-align: left;" |  || "article, essay"
|-
| 
| style="text-align: left;" |  || "writing"
|-
| 
| style="text-align: left;" |  || "secretary"
|-
| 
| style="text-align: left;" |  || "female secretary"
|-
| 
| style="text-align: left;" |  || "female secretaries"
|}

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 (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.

See also
 Welsh orthography

References

Category:Welsh grammar
Category:Language phonologies