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Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
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A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
As I recall, 'll' in Welsh is pronounced like 'cl', as in 'clap'.
What's precedent ever done for us?
Figure of Hourai
Sort of. If that's right.
What Golden Kaos said. Learn how to pronounce the alphabet and you can pronounce Welsh. By the way, as scary as it looks, Irish is the same. Learn how to pronounce the letters and it's pronounced how it looks, too. The difference is the emphasis laid upon broad and slender consonants, which is why you end up with the triple letter sounds ('aoi' for the 'eeee' sound, for example). Once you understand those, however, Irish becomes much simpler to handle.
I still struggle with Leominster to this day. I was almost an adult before I learned it's not pronounced phonetically.
There isn't a pure Celtic language left. Irish has been hugely influenced by Latin, too, along with Norse, French and English. I'm not sure we can ever say there was a pure Celtic language given the huge melting pot that is Europe.
How's this for a Proto-Indo-European reach: the Irish word 'fuinneog', the Norse word 'vindauga', the English word 'window' and the Latin word 'oculus' all have the same root word for 'eye' in them.
Well, technically speaking, 'w' can be a vowel in English, too. It's sort of a vowel that's been co-opted into functioning as a consonant, which makes it either both or neither, depending on your point of view. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Not quite. The 'sh' sound puts your tongue into the wrong position. You need to hold the front part of the tongue to the front part of the roof of your mouth, as if you're about to make the English 'l' sound, but breathe around the sides of your tongue, producing an aspirated noise that's somewhere between an English 'l' and a Scottish 'ch'.
You can start with the 's' sound and slide the tongue forwards into the 'll' sound. That can be one way to learn where the tongue goes for the 'll' sound. During the transition, you'll sound like you're lisping.
That's why the 'll' sound gets morphed into English as 'l' or 'fl' or 'cl' or 'th' (for example, Floyd instead of Lloyd).
The 'nh' and 'ngh'. I'm not sure of the best way to describe these. The sound could be described as being akin to the 'ng' sound you make when you say the word 'lung'.
Golden Kaos might be able to think of a better way to describe it.
edited 7th Sep '17 4:52:39 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Figure of Hourai
What the hell is up with the original spelling for Claiomh Solais, however? That one looks like someone just wanted to stuff more letters into it.
I think English has a distinct lack of uses for W that make the following pronounceable: Hwlffordd. It's not a vowel anywhere near so much if you for some reason decide to treat it as one. 
Think of it this way. The word 'tissue' has a 'w' in it.
As to Irish. The problem is common to a lot of languages... when you force the alphabet of one language to form the orthography of a different language, you inevitably have to shoehorn the non-native alphabet to the native sounds.
In other words, the Latin alphabet doesn't have the individual letter to inform the relationship between the vowels and consonants required, so letters need to be combined. If I recall, 'ai' and 'aio' are the same thing in Irish, the difference depends on whether or not the consonant following the vowel sound is broad or slender. If it's broad, the word uses 'ai'. If it's slender, the word uses 'aio'.
In 'Claidheamh Soluis', the 'aidhea' is the 'single' form that produces the 'eee' sound, which is probably why it was reformed from 'aidhea' to 'aio'.
edited 7th Sep '17 5:37:44 PM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Figure of Hourai
I'm looking at tissue, and I'm definitely not seeing a W in there.
Though "it's pronounceable if you learn to read it" gets away from the fact that almost all other European languages still look readable without too much trouble. Welsh and Gaelic... do not.
edited 7th Sep '17 5:58:58 PM by RainehDaze
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It's easy: tiss-ew. Double-u. Wu.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Now I'm wondering why Welsh and Gaelic didn't pull a Nordic or Polish and just stick new letters on the end instead of awkwardly repurposing multiple-letter groups as new single letters.
edited 7th Sep '17 6:37:51 PM by Zendervai
Not Three Laws compliant.
Figure of Hourai
I'm still wondering why Gaelic didn't adopt V after V was introduced as a distinct concept from U and given the exact same sound as mh.
Dutch did it, too... ij, aa, ooi, aai, ieuw, eeuw. They just went to town on using what Germanic languages see as vowel combos. As did Afrikaans, for that matter (but we saw sense in using Y more).
By the way, Polish does look unpronounceable, too, with their consonant clusters. It gets better when you know that Z modifies the preceding consonant, but that still leaves some big consonant clusters (like szcz, which would be transliterated shch in English - and, incidentally, gets its own single letter in cyrillic).
So...Now Farage is inflicting his presence on Germany by supporting our right wing movement...god, I hate that guy!
Welcome to the pain: make jokes about him (it's easy to do), but don't underestimate his backing. Because it's lethal. :|
edited 8th Sep '17 4:24:28 AM by Euodiachloris
Captain of the Dead City
No, the hard 'c' sound doesn't come anywhere near it. There isn't an English-language analogue, it's why English speakers find it so hard to pronounce. They're basically trying make muscles move in a way they've never done before, without knowing how it feels to get it right.
So is Y. Welsh has 7 vowels: AEIOUWY.
A is like in 'cat', 'hat', 'mat'.
E is like in 'get'.
I is like in 'tin'.
O is like in 'cot'
U is very close to I, and a lot of South Walians won't actually pronounce it differently, but the North Walian accent still pronounces it a lot further back in the throat.
W sounds like 'oo' in 'cool'.
Y sounds like the 'u' in 'punt' (not the Yorkshire way of saying it, poont ). Sometimes it sounds like 'ee', but only in certain words.
Hwlffordd therefore is (using English alphabet): Hool-fohrth - with the th at the end being a soft th like in 'the' not like in 'thatch'.
You're right about ng being like in lung. Nh and mh is basically an n or m followed very quickly by a h. It's fairly straightforward.
Also: from what I understand (I may be misinformed), we used to have K in our alphabet (we don't have K, V, X, Z, or Q, and J was only recently let in since it's hard to spell Jam and Jeriwsalem without it) - but when they were printing the Welsh Bible down in London, they didn't have enough K tiles for the printing press to account for how many times the hard 'c' sound occurs in the Welsh language. So they changed it to c, and c is always a hard c in modern Welsh, since that Bible basically standardised, codified and helped preserve the language for the next 400 years.
edited 8th Sep '17 6:17:45 AM by GoldenKaos
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
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I assume "Ynys" is one of those words where it makes the "ee" sound?
Captain of the Dead City
In the case of the second y, sure, but not the first. Uh-nees.
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So... "Ynys y Cedyrn" is "uh-nees uh kedeern"?
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Captain of the Dead City
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edited 8th Sep '17 8:16:56 AM by GoldenKaos
"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."
(Avatar by Coffee)
It says something like "the Isle of Giants", no?
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Who is Farage supporting, the AFD?
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Yes.
Who else? It is the only right wing party which will manage the jump past the 5% hurdle.
Captain of the Dead City
Isle of the Strong/Mighty/Steadfast is closer. Isle of Giants would be 'Ynys y Cewri'.
It's an old poetic name for the island of Great Britain. And/or Anglesey, apparently
Been reading that the government is facing criticism over the poor preparation and shoddy response to Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean territories.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
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Is "ll" pronounced a bit like "sh", but with your tongue to the roof of your mouth like "l"? Also, since we're talking about Welsh, how do you pronounce "mh", "nh" and "ngh"?
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground