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Re: USAGE: Question about Welsh.

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Friday, June 25, 2004, 4:18
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 =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760

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Joe <joe@...>