Talk:Welsh phonology

Welsh <ch> = /χ/?

Why does this article (and also Ch (digraph)) claim the Welsh <ch> is velar /x/ and not uvular /χ/? I notice the references here are from the 1980s but Peter Wynn Thomas in his authoritative Gramadeg y Gymraeg (1996) gives the sound as /χ/ (p.751)? On a personal note, I've only ever heard native speakers using /χ/ too. Does anybody have any objections to me changing it? Llusiduonbach (talk) 12:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll double-check when I get home, but I'm pretty sure the source it comes from calls it velar. Anyway, since the two don't contrast, it isn't crucial; and for phonological purposes it's probably useful to think of it as velar since it's the fricative correspondent of /k/, for example under Aspirate Mutation. —Angr 12:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

True. Just thought since PWT uses it it was worth mentioning. Re it being the fricative correspondent of /k/, we haven't used /ɸ/ for /f/, and /χ/ sometimes has no relation to /k/ in other words. But yeah as you say, maybe it makes it simpler to understand/work with as /x/. Llusiduonbach (talk) 13:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I'll double check what Jones 1984 says. At any rate, at the very least it would worth mentioning that that the phoneme /x/ is "often" or "usually" (or whatever) realized as a uvular [χ]. —Angr 13:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, Jones 1984 too calls it uvular, so I changed the symbol and changed the column to "Dorsal" rather than "Velar". —Angr 15:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

FYI - the ch sound is still listed at voiceless velar fricative, not voiceless uvular fricative. Lfh (talk) 19:02, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

ftfu - Znex (talk) 04:14, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that English speakers often pronounce /χ/ when trying to pronounce /x/, for example in Spanish words. In the present, the Welsh phonetics may be affected by English to a certain degree and I think this might be the reason of the /χ/ pronunciation. However, listen to this video. At 0:13, chantorion seems to be pronounced with /x/ rather than /χ/. Mountleek (talk) 14:11, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, I often find English speakers come out with a /x/ when attempting a /χ/, or worse (/k/)! I don't think the singer in the clip is a very reliable example of Welsh pronunciation (cf. the way she sings nhad, annwyl, gwrol ryfelwyr, ryddid, wyf, yn...). Great voice though! Llusiduonbach (talk) 11:40, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

As a postscript to this, I should mention that some speakers in the south west do use [x], but this is a regional, rather than the much more common [χ]. Llusiduonbach (talk) 23:04, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Stress

Would anybody care to elaborate greatly on stress?

Did you see Welsh phonology#Stress and pitch? What else do you want to know? —Angr 08:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I added some notes as to what the symbols actually sound like, but it got removed. Surely it makes more sense to have all the information in one place, rather than readers having to look up each sound article separately? (Not to mention the digraphs; I don't believe there is any article on the wiki that informs people what Welsh ei sounds like, etc.) Or should the information go in another article? I'm slightly confused... Mark J (talk) 13:45, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the info you want is at Welsh orthography (just renamed from Welsh alphabet). For many languages, Wikipedia has separate articles on the orthography and the phonology, and the spelling-to-pronunciation rules are then given in the orthography article rather than the phonology article. —Angr 13:56, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know - I didn't understand the difference between the two. Problem solved. Mark J (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Quality of short and long vowels

In the vowel table there is a qualitative, difference in the pronunciation of each short vowel and its long counterpart, but as a Welsh speaker myself I don't believe I have heard a qualitative difference for any of the short-long vowel pairs in any dialect of Welsh, only a quantitative difference. Who else agrees? — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Stevens 20 (talk • contribs) 00:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying the chart in question is inaccurate/misrepresentative in that regard or are you saying that you're unusual? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

For the majority of speakers, there is a qualitative, as well as quantitative difference, e.g. llen [ɬɛn], llên [ɬeːn], although in some areas, the difference is only quantitative, e.g. some north-western speakers say [ɬɛn] and [ɬɛːn] respectively. The bit that strikes me as odd in the table is that the /a ~ ɑː/ distinction is qualitative. I'd say this is a more geographically restricted feature rather than /a ~ aː/, although I'd have to check this. I need to fiddle with that section sometime, actually, to get rid of /əː/ (no longer a feature of the language, though preserved in the writing system e.g. tyrrau ~ tyrau which are pronounced the same today but would have been something like [təraɨ ~ təˑraɨ] in the past). I need to put some stuff up about short and long vowels in Northern diphthongs and semi-long vowels in the South. Will try when I get time. Llusiduonbach (talk) 23:21, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Edited consonants

I've added a few bits to the consonants section so could anybody who's informed or interested edit / contribute / comment / question if necessary. Diolch / Thanks! Llusiduonbach (talk) 13:03, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

By the way, I've also put up some things I'd appreciate being discussed on the Wikipedia:IPA for Welsh page I'd appreciate some help with. Llusiduonbach (talk) 13:58, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Citation needed for consonant shift from [ɬ] to [ç]

I noticed a "citation needed" marker for the statement that some speakers pronounce ⟨ll⟩ as [ç] instead of [ɬ]. Would this blog entry (Welsh ll, Thursday 26 June 2008) by phonologist John Wells of UCL be enough proof for such a statement in this context? Buriaku (talk) 09:19, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation of the Ll Digraph

Why do I always see nonprofessional sources describing the sound as "throaty" when all the professional sources I see describe it as an alveolar lateral fricative? Is there some secondary articulation in the throat or a sound shift going on? 76.18.160.47 (talk) 01:20, 5 September 2013 (UTC)