Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9446951:


Welsh Smash 21 1, 4:12am

Once you know how to pronounce the letters in our alphabet, it's rather simple to read and pronounce.

It gets a little complicated around the letter f (pronounced like a 'v', 'ff' is 'f') and 'dd', 'll' are variations of the 'th' sound (not quite, but close enough).

And we also have 'ch' (which sounds kind of like you're trying to spit - "like the ch in the Scottish word ‘loch’, but with more phlegm"), 'ng' ("as in ‘song’, where the g isn’t hard, like in ‘gig’, but a soft glottal stop made in your throat" - sometimes you see Nghymru (original: Cymru), which is a mutation of the word for the sake of grammar), 'ph' ('English' f, like 'ff'), 'r' must be rolled (if you can roll your r's), 'rh' ("make a huffy, breathy sound before your rolled ‘r’").

And we pronounce the other letters in the alphabet differently too.

... You don't really realise how... strange it is until you write it down...

(I had to look up how to pronounce some letters, as some are hard to describe when you're used to them and have known them since you were little)

Eventually, Welsh letters make sense. It's hilarious to see young children learn both alphabets in school and try to keep them separate! (We're very bilingual here; lots of people speak both Welsh and English)