I’ve often heard people say “how can you read Welsh? There’s no
vowels” or “Welsh looks like a keyboard smash”. Well, like many other
European languages, Welsh uses it’s own alphabet that is seperate from
the English alphabet (though don’t be mistaken, it still uses the latin
script). The Welsh alphabet is as follows:
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, y
You may have noticed that there are some combinations of what would be “multiple letters” in English. In Welsh, these are considered single letters.
Now we know what letters we’re working with, let’s break the list down into consonants and vowels.
Consonants
The consonants in Welsh are the following:
b, c, ch, d, dd, f, ff, g, ng, h, j, l, ll, m, n, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th
Since a lot of the consonants are said the same way they are in English, I’ll explain only how to pronounce the ones you may be unfamiliar with
ch - like the ch in the Scottish word “loch” or in the name “Bach” (like the composer)
dd - like the th sound in “this” or “that”
f - like the English v sound (or like the f in “of”)
ff - like the english f sound (e.g. the f in “flower” or “farm”)
ng - like the ng sound at the end of “sing” or “ring”
ll - this one will take some practice. Place your the tip of your tongue against the ridge of your gums behind your top teeth, open your mouth and blow out air quickly
ph - like the ph in “photo”
rh - said like a much breathier r sound
th - said like the th sound in “think” or “thanks”
Vowels
The vowels in Welsh are the following:
a, e, i, o, u, w, y
u - said like the ee in “street” or “fleet”
w - said like the oo in “mood” or “food”
y - can be said like the u in “hut” or “nut” (the schwa sound, if you’re a linguist) or like the i in “tin” or “bin”
Diacritics
The Welsh language has a few diacritics that can be added to the vowels.
The most common diacritic you’ll see is the to bach (the circumflex), which looks like this:
â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ
This diacritic extends the vowel sound and is used a fair amount
Another diacritic you may come across is the diaeresis, which looks like this:
ï
This diacritic is used on the vowel i, and ϊ is followed by another vowel (typically o) to create a seperation between the two vowels and prevent them from creating a diphthong (where the two vowels blend together to a sound between them)
For example, ϊ is used in the word “sgϊo” to make it be pronounced as “sgee-oh” rather than “sgyo” (how it would sound when written as “sgio”)
In order to help explain how to say some of the letters in the Welsh alphabet, I used this site from the open university.
For an audio guide on how to pronounce these letters, this youtube video is great for the sounds (although the examples of words they chose aren’t necessarily the best choices, just so you’re aware).
I hope this post has helped people to understand the Welsh alphabet and it’s potential diacritics a little better
