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 [ɬ] 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.

Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Symbols in parentheses are either allophones, or found only in loanwords. The sound /z/ generally occurs in loanwords, e.g. sŵ /zuː/ ('zoo'), although this is usually realised as /s/ in northern accents, e.g. /suː/. The postalveolar affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ occur mainly in loanwords, e.g. tsips /tʃɪps/ ('chips') and jeli /ˈdʒɛli/ ('jelly'), but also in some dialects as developments from /tj/ and /dj/, e.g. /dʒaul/ from diafol /ˈdjavɔl/ ('devil'). The voiceless nasals /m̥ n̥ ŋ̊/ occur mostly word-initially, as a consequence of nasal mutation. These nasals have recently been interpreted as sequences of /m n ŋ/ + /h/.^[7][8] Initial /χw/ is colloquially realised as [ʍ] in the south, e.g. chwech /χweːχ/ ('six') pronounced [ʍeːχ].

The stops /p t k/ are distinguished from /b d ɡ/ by means of aspiration more consistently than by voicing, as /b d ɡ/ are actually devoiced in some contexts. This devoiced nature is recognised in the spelling of /sp sk/ as ⟨sb sg⟩, although /st/ is orthographically ⟨st⟩ for historical reasons. For this reason some linguists argue that Welsh consonants are better described in terms of fortis and lenis rather than voiced and unvoiced. In this scheme not only /p/ vs /b/ and /t/ vs /d/ but also /s/ vs /h/ and /m/ vs /v/ can be described as fortis–lenis pairs.^[9]

The consonants /p t k/ and often also /s, ɬ, m, ŋ/ tend to be pronounced lengthened or geminated after a short stressed vowel and before another vowel, in words such as hápus ['hapːʰɨs] 'happy', áteb ['atːʰɛb] 'answer', állan ['aɬːan] 'out'. This doubling disappears if a suffix causes the stress to shift, e.g. hapúsach [haˈpʰɨs:aχ] 'happier', atébion Welsh pronunciation: [a'tʰɛbjɔn] 'answers', allánol Welsh pronunciation: [a'ɬanol] 'external'.^[10] (Acute accents here are present to show the stress and are not used in written Welsh.)

The fricatives /v ð/ tend not to be pronounced in certain contexts, e.g. nesaf /nɛsav/ ('next') realised as /ˈnɛsa/ or i fyny /iː ˈvənɨ/ ('up') from mynydd /mənɨð, mənɪð/ ('mountain'). Historically, this occurred so often with the voiced velar fricative that it disappeared entirely from the language. The phoneme /ʃ/ occurs for all speakers in certain words, almost all borrowings (e.g., siarad 'talk', sisial 'whisper', siop 'shop', siampŵ 'shampoo'). Otherwise its distribution varies regionally. In northern accents, it can occur when /s/ precedes /iː j/, even (depending on region) across some word boundaries, e.g., es i [ˈeːʃ i] ('I went'). In some southern accents it is produced when /s/ follows /ɪ/ or /iː/, e.g. mis [miːʃ] ('month'). The voiceless fricative /χ/ is realised as uvular except by some southwestern speakers, who produce a velar variant [x].

The /r/ phoneme is pronounced as the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] by some speakers in Dyfed and Gwynedd, in a pronunciation known as tafod tew ('thick tongue').^[11]

In some dialects of north-western Welsh, the /l/ phoneme is consistently velarised or "dark" ([ɫ], not to be confused with [ɬ]) in all positions, but remains unvelarised or "clear" ([l]) in the south, except in rare exceptions where [ɫ] is found after /d/, e.g. dlos [dɫos] 'pretty'.

An important feature of Welsh (as of other Celtic languages) is the system of consonant mutations, in which certain consonants are replaced by other consonants in certain contexts. These mutations are found both at the beginning of words, and internally in compound words. Three different types of mutation are recognised: the soft mutation; the nasal mutation; and the aspirate mutation. For example, tad /ta:d/ "father" (the radical form); ei dad /i da:d/ "his father" (soft mutation); (fy) nhad /və n̥a:d/ "my father" (nasal mutation); ei thad /i θa:d/ "her father" (aspirate mutation).

Some mutations have a grammatical function (for example, distinguishing masculine from feminine, or subject from object, or noun from adverb). Other mutations occur automatically, for example after words such as o "from" (followed by a soft mutation), yn "in" (followed by a nasal mutation) or a "and" (followed by an aspirate mutation), or when a noun is preceded by an adjective or prefix, e.g. hen ddyn /he:n ðɨːn/ "old man" (soft mutation).

• In the soft mutation, which is the most common, /k, p, t, g, b, d, ɬ, m, r̥/ mutate to /g, b, d, –, v, ð, l, v, r/. In colloquial Welsh, /tʃ/ can mutate to /dʒ/. In certain circumstances, for example when a feminine singular noun follows the definite article, the other seven consonants mutate, but /ɬ/ and /r̥/ do not mutate; this is called limited soft mutation. The soft mutation of /g/ is silent in most words, but in some borrowings from English, such as gêm /ge:m/ "game", /g/ does not mutate.

• In the nasal mutation, /k, p, t, g, b, d/ mutate into /ŋ̊, m̥, n̥, ŋ, m, n/. In colloquial Welsh, /m/ and /n/ can sometimes mutate to /m̥/ and /n̥/. Other consonants are unaffected.

• In the aspirate mutation, /k, p, t/ mutate to /x, f, θ/. Other consonants are unaffected, or in some circumstances may undergo the soft mutation.

• The voiceless fricative consonants /f, h, s, ʃ, x/ never mutate. The fricatives /v/ and /θ/ at the beginning of words occur only as the result of mutation.

The vowel phonemes of Welsh are as follows:^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

The vowels /ɨ̞/ and /ɨː/ merged with /ɪ/ and /iː/ in southern dialects, but are retained in northern dialects. An acoustic study of ten speakers from North Wales showed that some speakers did not distinguish the short vowels /ɪ/ and /ɨ̞/, although all clearly distinguished the long vowels /ɨː/ and /iː/.^[12] The same study showed that long vowels clearly have longer duration than short ones both in Southern and Northern Welsh.

The length contrast for most vowels in most cases involves also a contrast in vowel quality (e.g., /iː/ vs. /ɪ/) and there is debate as to which is the primary contrasting feature.^[6] The long counterpart to short /a/ is sometimes misleadingly transcribed /ɑ/. This is often found in solely quality-distinctive transcriptions to avoid using a length mark. The actual pronunciation of long /a/ is [aː], which makes the vowel pair unique in that for most speakers there is no significant quality difference.^[12] Regional realisations of /aː/ may be [æː] or [ɛː] in north-central and (decreasingly) south-eastern Wales or sporadically as [ɑː] in some southern areas undoubtedly under the influence of English.^[13]

Long vowels are found only in stressed syllables, and in North Wales only in stressed final syllables. Since stress in Welsh is, with a few exceptions, on the penultimate syllable, this means that length contrasts mostly occur only in monosyllabic words, apart from a few words such as Caerdydd 'Cardiff' which are stressed on the final syllable.^[6] To a large extent the length of the vowel in a stressed final syllable can be predicted by the consonant which follows it. Where there is no final consonant, as in tŷ 'house', or if the vowel in a final syllable is followed by b, d, g, v, dd, ff, th, ch, s, e.g. dydd 'day', cath 'cat', bach 'small', bys 'finger', the vowel is usually long. When the final syllable ends in p, t, c, m, ng, sh, j or when it ends with two consonants the vowel is usually short, e.g. trwm 'heavy', twp 'stupid', llong 'ship', plant 'children', corff 'body'.^[14]

Sometimes there are differences between North and South Wales. Words in which the final vowel is followed by ll or s before a stop consonant, such as gwallt 'hair', Pasg 'Easter', and cosb 'punishment', tend to have a long vowel in the North, short in the South. Conversely, heb 'without', and monosyllables ending in ll such as llall 'the other', and pell 'far' tend to have a short vowel in the North, but long in the South. But (h)oll 'all' has a long vowel even in the North.^[14]

When a final vowel is followed by l, n, r, the vowel is long in some words, short in others: for example, it is long in mil 'a thousand', hen 'old', tir 'land', but short in tal 'tall', pren 'wood', car 'car'.

The vowel /ə/ 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 y.^[13]

In penultimate syllables in North Wales accents all vowels are short. Thus cath 'cat' has a long vowel, but cathod 'cats' has a short one. In South Wales in some words, such as defaid 'sheep (pl)', efail 'forge', ola(f) 'last', rhedeg 'to run', ugain 'twenty', ifanc 'young', can be heard with a vowel which has been described as "half-long". Words such as lleol 'local', where the penultimate vowel is followed by no consonant, have a long vowel. In South Wales tonau [ˈtʰoˑnɛ] 'tunes' and tonnau [ˈtʰɔnɛ] 'waves' are often pronounced differently, but in North Wales identically.^[15]

Vowels in penultimate syllables followed by two consonants, as in cynta(f) 'first' or gorffen 'to finish', are usually short, as are vowels followed by a consonant + the semivowel [i̯], as in dynion 'men' or cofio 'to remember'. Penultimate vowels before /p/, /t/, /c/, /m/, /ŋ/, /ɫ/, /s/, /ʃ/, /dʒ/ are usually short^[14] and the consonants themselves, especially /p/, /t/, /c/, /ɫ/, are often pronounced long when following a stressed vowel, e.g. hapus 'happy', capel 'chapel', ateb 'to answer', tocyn 'ticket', cyllell 'knife'.^[16]

The long vowels are not all derived from Proto-Celtic long vowels, which in some cases were transformed into diphthongs in Welsh, but instead from the New Quantity System.^[17]

Northern Welsh has at least 13 diphthongs,^[18] but these are collapsed to just 8 diphthongs in Southern Welsh. Thus, Northern Welsh (h)ail 'second' [hai̯l], hael 'liberal' [haːɨ̯l], and haul 'sun' [haɨ̯l] are homophones in Southern Welsh and pronounced [hai̯l].^[12]

The diphthongs containing /ɨ/ occur only in northern dialects; in southern dialects /ʊɨ/ is replaced by /ʊi/ and /ɨu, əɨ~ɛɨ, ɔɨ, a(ː)ɨ/ are merged with /ɪu, əi~ɛi, ɔi, ai/. There is a general tendency in the South to simplify diphthongs in everyday speech, e.g. Northern /ɡwaːɨθ/ corresponding to /ɡwaːθ/ in the South, or Northern /ɡwɛiθjɔ/ and Southern /ɡwiθɔ/. Since different speakers pronounce the diphthongs in different ways, the phonetic transcription can only be approximate. Mayr and Davies note that although /ɔi/ and /ɔɨ/ are both usually transcribed with /ɔ/ as their first element, in fact the two diphthongs start from different vowels.^[12]

Some writers classify the diphthongs as long and short. In their acoustic study of 20 different speakers from North and South Wales, Mayr and Davies (2011) found that /ɛi/ tended to be shorter than other diphthongs in overall length; however, they judged that there was no clear way of dividing the diphthongs into long and short as there is with monophthongs.^[12] On the other hand, Ball (1983), testing a speaker from Anglesey pronouncing words containing /ai/, /aɨ/, and /aːɨ/ (for example hail 'feast', haul 'sun', hael 'generous'), found that /aːɨ/ was not only longer overall than the other two by about 30%, but that the first element in /aːɨ/ was approximately twice as long as the first element of the other two.^[19] Similar spectrographic evidence showed that the first element in /ɔɨ/ <oe> in the pronunciation of one Northern Welsh speaker was longer than the first element of /ɔi/ <oi>.^[20] According to Morris-Jones (1922), the diphthong /ʊɨ/ also has a long first element in some words, such as hwyr 'late', mwy 'more', llwyd 'grey', though a short one in others such as pwynt 'point' and rhwystr 'obstacle'. He notes that in North Wales there is also a long first element in words such as llaw 'hand' and tew 'fat' where there is no final consonant. According to the same author the first element is also long in certain other words such as paun 'peacock', trôi 'he was turning'.^[21] In penultimate syllables, the first element of all diphthongs is short.^[22]

Welsh also has rising diphthongs and triphthongs, starting with the glides /w/ and /j/, e.g. chwech 'six', iaith 'language'. The glide /w/ when derived by mutation from /gw/] is usually treated as a consonant, taking the article y, e.g. y wasg 'the press'; whereas [j] is usually treated as a vowel with the article yr, e.g. yr iaith 'the language'. Both glides tend to become devoiced following a voiceless consonant, for example in chwerthin 'to laugh', clociau 'clocks'.^[23]

The digraph <wy> is ambiguous, since it can represent either a falling diphthong (/ʊɨ/, /ʊi/, /u:i/, /u:ɨ/) or a rising one (/wi/, /wɨ/, /wi:/, /wɨ:/): falling in wythnos 'week', gwybod 'to know', wyliau 'holidays', posibilrwydd 'possibility'; rising in gwydr 'glass', digwydd 'to happen', ffermwyr 'farmers'. There are several words which formerly had a falling diphthong but which now are often pronounced with a rising one, especially in North Wales, for example wyneb 'face', ofnadwy 'dreadful', Conwy 'Conwy'.^[24]

Stress falls in the vast majority of polysyllabic words on the penultimate syllable. There are three main sources of exception. First, in a few native words, the stress falls on the final syllable (e.g. verbs ending in -áu and words like Cymraeg "Welsh") as a result of a stressed penultimate syllable coalescing with a following vowel to form a diphthong or long monophthong. Second, certain prefixes do not reliably take stress (e.g., di- "without", as in diwerth "worthless", which is stressed on the final syllable). Third, borrowings from other languages often retain the stress in the original language, as with ambiwlans and testament (both stressed on the first syllable), though even here stress generally shifts to the penultimate in inflected forms such as the plural.^[25][26] 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:

Note also how adding a syllable to ysgrifennydd to form ysgrifenyddes changes the pronunciation of the second ⟨y⟩. This is because the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ 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.^[26] 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.^[17]