Welsh phonology

The phonology of Welsh is characterised by a number of sounds that do not occur in English and are typologically rare in European languages, such as the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative and several voiceless sonorants (nasals and liquids), some of which result from consonant mutation. Stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable in polysyllabic words, while the word-final unstressed syllable receives a higher pitch than the stressed syllable.

Consonants
Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:

Symbols in parentheses are either allophones, or found only in loanwords. The sound generally occurs in loanwords, e.g. sw  'zoo', although this is usually realised as  in northern accents, e.g. .  The postalveolar affricates  and  occur mainly in loanwords, e.g. tships  'chips'  and jeli  'jelly', 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. Initial (or ) 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 $⟨sb sg⟩$, although  is orthographically $⟨st⟩$ for historical reasons.

The fricatives may also be devoiced in some contexts, but are distinguished from  by having a shorter frication length than the latter. There is a tendency in the spoken language not to pronounce these voiced fricatives in certain contexts, e.g. nesaf 'next' realised as  or i fyny  'up' from mynydd  'mountain'. Historically, this occurred so often with the voiced uvular fricative that it disappeared entirely from the language. Some speakers realise the voiceless lateral fricative as an voiceless palatal fricative  in some or all contexts. The occurrence and distribution of the phoneme varies from area to area. Very few native words are pronounced with by all speakers, e.g. siarad  'speak, talk', although it appears in borrowings, e.g. siop  'shop'. In northern accents, it can occur when precedes  or, e.g. mi 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.

The phoneme is reportedly pronounced as a voiced uvular fricative by some speakers in Dyfed and Gwynedd, in a pronunciation known as tafod tew 'thick tongue'.

In northern Welsh, the alveolar lateral approximant is consistently velarised or 'dark' in all positions, but remains unvelarised or 'clear' in the south.

Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Welsh are as follows:

The vowels and  occur only in Northern dialects; in Southern dialects they are replaced by  and  respectively. In Southern dialects, the contrast between long and short vowels is found in stressed syllables only; in Northern dialects, the contrast is found only in stressed word-final syllables (including monosyllabic words).

The vowel does not occur in the final syllable of words (except a few monosyllabic proclitics). In Southern dialects, schwa can be long or short. In Northern dialects, schwa is always short, because long vowels appear only in word-final syllables, a position where schwa never appears.

The diphthongs containing occur only in Northern dialects; in Southern dialects  is replaced by,  are merged with , and  are merged with. There is a general tendency in the South to simplify diphthongs in everyday speech, e.g. Northern corresponding to  in the South, or Northern  and Southern.

Stress and pitch
Stress in polysyllabic words occurs most commonly on the penultimate syllable, more rarely on the final syllable (e.g. verbs ending in -áu). Exceptions can arise in relation to borrowings from foreign words, such as ambiwlans and testament, and words with an epenthetic echo vowel such as cenedl. According to its positioning, related words or concepts (or even plurals) can sound quite different, as syllables are added to the end of a word and the stress moves correspondingly, e.g.:


 * {| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"


 * align=left | || align=right |  || align=left |
 * ysgrif
 * align=right | || — an article or essay
 * ysgrifen
 * align=right | || — writing
 * ysgrifennydd
 * align=right | || — a secretary
 * ysgrifenyddes
 * align=right | || — a female secretary
 * ysgrifenyddesau
 * align=right | || — female secretaries
 * }
 * align=right | || — a female secretary
 * ysgrifenyddesau
 * align=right | || — female secretaries
 * }
 * }
 * }

Note also how adding a syllable to ysgrifennydd to form ysgrifenyddes changes the pronunciation of the second "y". This is because the pronunciation of "y" depends on whether or not it is in the final syllable.

Stress on penultimate syllables is characterised by a low pitch, 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 Proto-Brythonic 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.