Re: USAGE: Question about Welsh.

On Thursday, June 24, 2004, at 11:02 , Joe wrote:

> I'm going to Snowdonia tomorrow.  I hope to be able to excercise some
> Welsh there, but I have a question:
I have a feeling this might reach you too late - tho, of course, north
Wales is quite civilized & has Internet connexions  :)

> How do you decide whether a <y> is [i] or [@]?
That's easy. |y| is normally 'obscure', i.e. [@], except:
1. when the final syllable of polysyllabic words;
2. normally in words one syllable, also.

The only exceptions to (2) are the words: y(r)(= ['the' - also in certain
contexts, a preverbal particle], 'yn'/'ym'/'yng' (= "in"), 'fy' (= 'my')
and in a few borrowed words like 'nyrs' (= 'nurse').

BTW the pronunciation of 'clear' |y| as [i] is south Walian. In the north,
  it and |u| are high _mid_ unrounded vowels (SAMPA [1]).

> And, for that matter,
> how do you tell if a vowel is long or short(besides the circumflex)?
A little more complicate  :)

In words of one syllable, vowels are short:
(a) when they stand alone in words of just one vowel;
(b) when they are followed by -c, -p, -t, -m or -ng (this does not,
however, apply to -n);
(c) when they are followed by a cluster of two or more consonants;
(d) when |a|, |e|, |o|, |w| or |y| (but *not* |i| or |u|) are followed by
-n, -l or -r and have no circumflex  - with the exceptions of 'hen' (old)
and 'dyn' (man) where the vowels are long.

In words of one syllable, vowels are long:
(a) when they occur in unblocked syllables;
(b) when they are followed by -g, -b, -d, -f, -dd, -ff, -th, -ch or -s.
(c) |i| and |u| are long before -n -l, or -r - with the exception of 'prin'
(rare, scarce) and a few borrowed words like 'pin' (pin).
(All other vowels take a circumflex if long before -n, -l, or -r, except
'hen' and 'dyn' which I noted above).

In words of more than one syllable:
- unstressed vowels are always short;
- vowels in the stressed syllable (penultimate) follow in the main the
rules for monosyllabic words above, but where monosyllabics have long
vowels, polysyllabics have medium length vowels, cf.
ceg [ke:g] = 'mouth'
cegin ['ke·gIn] = 'kitchen'   [Hope the 'middle dot' doesn't get mangled
in cyberspace]

Hope this helps & that it reaches Joe in time  :)

Pob hwyl!

Ray
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