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)

I agree that this video should not be taken as evidence of anything other than the pronunciation used by one Australian learner of Welsh! (The video comments show that the singer, though born in Wales, began learning Welsh at age 11, nine years after arriving in Australia.) -- Picapica (talk) 02:00, 11 October 2019 (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)

From the Welsh I've heard, which isn't a huge lot, I also think that [χ] is usual. But [χ] is also the predominant realisation in German, where it is almost invariably transcribed /x/, or even [x]. Of course, there aren't just two sounds [x] and [χ]; it's a continuum, and the frontness and openness of the adjacent vowel(s) may have an influence. As far as English-speakers are concerned, I certainly agree with you that they usually pronounce [x], not [χ]. When they say Bach as [bɑx] and are very proud of themselves, of course I would never tell them that they have to go much deeper, because it's [bäχ] (more or less obligatorily in this case because of the open vowel). 178.4.151.74 (talk) 13:26, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

It definitely is [χ] and not [x]. Phonetically it is [χ] but aligns with the velar consonants /k g/, just as [θ] and [ð] aligns with /t d/ and [f] and [v] with /p b/. — Dyolf87 (talk) 03:18, 8 August 2020 (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)

I have never heard ⟨ll⟩ as [ç] instead of [ɬ] - not in Welsh! Maybe by a non-Welsh speaker trying to get their tongue around [ɬ] but that doesn't count. — Dyolf87 (talk) 03:21, 8 August 2020 (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)

See the comment right above yours. — Lfdder (talk) 09:15, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but [ç] (the voiceless palatal fricative) isn't "throaty" either! Calling either sound throaty is simply a case of non-professional misperception, -- Picapica (talk) 02:15, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

⟨ll⟩ is never "throaty", and as per my reply above, I'm not convinced about the [ç] pronunciation either! It's always [ɬ]! — Dyolf87 (talk) 03:24, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Voiceless nasals = allophones ?

The following is unclear to me: Below the consonant chart it says that consonants given in brackets are either allophones or restricted to loanwords. The voiceless nasals are given in brackets and hence would have to be allophones. But is that true? Isn't mh distinct from m? And if so, how can it be an allophone? — Or is the intended meaning that mh occurs only as the nasal mutation of p? In that case, the word "allophone" would be quite wrong, because allophone means another pronunciation of the same phonem, used either interchangeably or in certain phonetic environments. Initial mutations, however, are not a phonetic thing. They are grammatical markers. — Please clarify! Thanks in advance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.169.49.216 (talk) 17:37, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

The mh, nh, ngh-sounds ([m̥h, n̥h, ŋ̊h]) occur independently, often as mutated forms of voiceless stops, occasionally without alternation (e.g. in ‘‘nhw’’), and so are certainly not mere allophones of /m, n, ŋ/ (just like /θ/ is not merely an allophone of /t/). They are distinguished in phonemic transcriptions, and as such it’s only logical that they are counted as separate phonemes. There can be written as /m̥, n̥, ŋ̊/, or more abstractly as /mh, nh, ŋh/, but I believe the latter option is not conventional. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.64.82.100 (talk) 15:33, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. So that's pretty much what I meant... The text below the consonant chart should be changed. Or better: The brackets around /m̥, n̥, ŋ̊/ should be deleted. They are full, native phonemes.

I agree. They certainly do contrast with the voiced equivalents, e.g. fy ngelyn / fy nghelyn (my enemy / my holly). They also contrast with the stops used in the unmutated forms — and to put this beyond doubt, consider colloquial usage, where the mere use of the mutated form can imply an omitted fy, hence car / nghar (a car / my car), etc. So it is hard to see which other phonemes they are meant to be allophones of. I will delete the brackets. --Money money tickle parsnip (talk) 22:06, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Consonant chart changes and phonotactics section

It seems that user Kwamikagami has changed the consonant chart without any discussion. S/he has made ridiculous changes to show that Welsh, at the phonemic level, distinguishes between aspirated unvoiced plosives and unaspirated devoiced plosives, i.e. /pʰ b̥/ in all cases. Apart from being grossly incorrect, Kwamikagami seems to have a hobby of changing the phonetic inventories of other languages and has an obsession with voicing/aspiration distinction. At the phonemic level Welsh distinguishes between voiceless and voiced plosives, i.e. /p b/ regardless of their actual phonetic value (which I would argue is not between [pʰ b̥] in all cases – word-initially, for example, voiced consonants are always voiced!) This chart must be restored to its original state before Kwamikagami's edits.

Kwamikagami's section on phonotactics is also grossly erroneous and relies on a single dubious source for its claims. I recommend that this section be removed as it is not encyclopaedic and damaging to anyone's study of Welsh. – Dyolf87 (talk) 12:13, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

My edits may well be wrong, but they are sourced. Which source would you recommend as most reliable?

And since we have no source at all for phonotactics, which source would you recommend for that? I had a question on Welsh phonotactics, and it was nowhere mentioned in this rather minimal article. When I found a source, I added the info here. It was rather irresponsible of you to delete the info rather than fix it.

And yes, I have an obsession with accuracy. And completeness, when I have the time. So should you. — kwami (talk) 06:29, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Okay, no response so restoring sourced version.

"word-initially, for example, voiced consonants are always voiced!" -- actually, no. According to the source for our consonant table (Glyn E. Jones (1984), The distinctive vowels and consonants of Welsh), /b, d, g/ are [...] regularly unvoiced in word initial and final positions: [examples of initial and final [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊]], and frequently so in a medial fully voiced environment, e.g. intervocalically: [examples of intervocalic [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊]]. They may be partially voiced in all these environments, but fully voiced occasionally in medial fully voiced environments only. Since aspiration/non-aspiration is the constant feature distinguishing the two series of stops, voicing may be considered redundant.

Per our source again, the voiceless nasals and trill strongly aspirated, and may actually be voiced prior to the aspiration.

There's a chapter in that volume, so I'll check that and see if the material I added needs to be revised.

— kwami (talk) 19:16, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

You cannot simply add nonsense to an article just because you have a source for it. Find better sources. "My edits may well be wrong, but they are sourced" is not good enough. And, as I said, these charts are for phonemes, not phonetic value. The phoneme /k/ in English is more often [kʰ] than [k] but we would never add /kʰ/ to an English phoneme inventory - the same applies to Welsh. Phonemically, /ɡ/ is /ɡ/ however it's realised, which may be /k/ or /ɡ/ depending on environment. The realisation, for example, of /ɡ/ as [ɡ̥] anywhere in Welsh is definitely not agreed upon and finding a single claim for it doesn't mean it's true, nor does it mean it can be added to the article. There are plenty of sources online and in books which give Welsh phoneme inventories, I suggest you read them and put Jones, 1984 in the bin where it belongs. – Dyolf87 (talk) 09:25, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

[ç] for /ɬ/

About [1], [2]. Does Wells' blog really pass WP:EXTRAORDINARY? In any case, I don't know where the "contradiction" lies. If the [ç] variant pronunciation exists, we can of course mention it as such (a variant!)—if properly sourced. Austronesier (talk) 14:20, 1 January 2024 (UTC)