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The phonology of Welsh language is characterised by a number of sounds that do not occur in English language and are rare in European languages, such as the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative and several voiceless sonorants (nasal consonant and liquid consonant), some of which result from consonant mutation. Stress usually falls on the Penult in polysyllabic words, while the word-final unstressed syllable receives a higher Pitch accent than the stressed syllable.
Symbols in parentheses are either , or found only in . The sound generally occurs in loanwords, e.g. sŵ ('zoo'), although this is usually realised as in northern accents, e.g. . The postalveolar affricates and occur mainly in loanwords, e.g. tsips ('chips') and jeli ('gelatin dessert'), but also in some dialects as developments from and , e.g. from diafol ('devil'). The voiceless nasals occur mostly word-initially, as a consequence of nasal mutation. These nasals have recently been interpreted as sequences of + . Initial is colloquially realised as in the south, e.g. chwech ('six') pronounced .
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 Orthography for historical reasons.
The fricatives tend not to be pronounced in certain contexts, e.g. nesaf ('next') realised as or i fyny ('up') from mynydd ('mountain'). Historically, this occurred so often with the voiced velar fricative that it disappeared entirely from the language. The occurrence and distribution of the phoneme varies from area to area. Only two native words are pronounced with by all speakers: siarad ('talk') and sisial (scissors), although it appears in borrowings, e.g. siop ('shop'). In northern accents, it can occur when precedes , e.g. es i ('I went'). In some southern dialects it is produced when follows or , e.g. mis ('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 the voiced uvular fricative by some speakers in Dyfed and Gwynedd, in a pronunciation known as tafod tew ('thick tongue').
In some dialects of north-western Welsh, the phoneme is consistently velarised or "dark" (, not to be confused with ) in all positions, but remains unvelarised or "clear" () in the south, except in rare exceptions where is found after , e.g. dlos 'pretty'.
The vowels and merged with and in southern dialects, but are retained in northern dialects.
The contrast between long and short vowels is found 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. The length contrast for most vowels also involves a contrast in vowel quality (e.g., /iː/ vs. /ɪ/) and there is debate as to which is the primary contrasting feature. 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 vowel does not occur in the final syllable of words (except a few monosyllabic ). It is always pronounced short except when emphasised in the name of the letter y.
The diphthongs containing occur only in northern dialects; in southern dialects is replaced by and are merged with . There is a general tendency in the South to simplify diphthongs in Colloquialism, e.g. Northern corresponding to in the South, or Northern and Southern .
The long vowels are not inherited from Proto-Celtic vowels, which were transformed into separate vowels, but instead from the New Quantity System.
| + | |
| ysgrif | "article, essay" |
| ysgrifen | "writing" |
| ysgrifennydd | "secretary" |
| ysgrifenyddes | "female secretary" |
| ysgrifenyddesau | "female secretaries" |
Note also how adding a syllable to ysgrifennydd to form ysgrifenyddes 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 accent, 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.
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