Welsh pronunciation for English speakers

[lareinemisere]

I come seeking help once more with the roleplaying game I'm translating (French > English). I've hit the appendices, which include a section advising on the pronunciation of the many Welsh words in the main text. I'm going to need to amend this section quite a bit, rather than just translating the original straight, since it is written based on the

Comments

[muckefuck]

Quick question: Is the audience for this publication primarily from the UK? I'm assuming so on the basis of the Birmingham reference.

You have the pronunciation of dd wrong. It's a "soft th" as in this or lithe (IPA [ð]). Wy is actually a falling diphthong in many words (i.e. IPA [ʊi] [South], [ʊɨ] [North]). I don't know where you got the pronunciation you did for ywy. Ts is not pronounced "sh" except colloquially in lenition position (e.g. dy tsips "your chips"). In initial position, it is generally "ch" (i.e. IPA [ʧ]).

ETA: Ng represents the sound in "finger" (IPA [ŋg]) only in certain circumstances, generally where two words comes together to forma a compound (e.g. Llangynfarch). Otherwise it's a simple [ŋ] as in "singer".

[lareinemisere]

The biggest market for RPGs is the US, but the publisher of the translation is British and I've been told to use British spelling and not to over-Americanise vocab (e.g. I'm translating 'cidre' as 'cider' not 'hard cider'). On reflection, it seems that the Birmingham reference won't help the average British reader all that much either, given that I appear to have made a complete dog's breakfast of that diphthong despite formerly living in Brum for almost a decade, so I think I'm just going to scratch that comparison altogether

[muckefuck]

Ywy = ui is a direct lift from a Welsh/English pronunciation guide I found online

Do you have a link for that? Finding an existing guide for British English speakers (and modifying it somewhat so as not to run afoul of copyright) is probably your best bet overall, but unfortunately a lot of them are mediocre.

I think the simplest explanation for the diphthongs is that they're combinations of the sounds represents by the two letters involved. So ew is e plus w, just as mawr (as you correctly state) consists of a plus w. English speakers have difficulty making close vowels pure, so telling them simply to use the open ones throughout (as you have done for e and o) is on balance the safest approach.

I'm kind of mystified why ts is even on a list like this in the first place, given that it's found only in very recent English borrowings. (The earlier convention was to use si [i.e. [ʃ]], e.g. sies "chess", siart "chart".) But maybe it's just my unwarranted bias that if Welsh is involved, it must be historical fantasy.

[lareinemisere]

I agree about the finding-and-modifying, which is pretty much what I did (Happily, I know a lot more about IP law than I do about Welsh!). I don't have the link for the site I ran across, but it was a walking website, not a specialist language one, something like go4awalk.com. It came pretty high up the rankings when I did a Google search for Welsh pronunciation guides, so I hoped it was a decent one. With the exception of my nightmare with 'ew', the combination of the English and French explanations meant that I thought I could 'hear' most of the sounds being aimed at...but I also knew I'd be safest asking people here to check my working, as it were.

As to why ts is on the list, my guess is that the French author also doesn't speak any Welsh and sought out similar (modern) lists, perhaps in English as well as French. She'll likely have been working on the basis that further Welsh words would be needed in the supplements to the Core Rule Book, and thus included various 'foreign' sounds that haven't shown up yet, in case they're

[sollersuk]

Oh, ouch. This is classic "if I was going there I wouldn't start from here". I heard of a group of enterprising Welsh hill farmers who bred and trained sheepdogs for sale, including to France. They came with cassettes of the commands the dogs had learned to respond to - in Welsh. There isn't a single sound in "chwith" (left) that French speakers can handle (trust me on this, I spent four years in a French school) - even the short "I" is completely alien. I could picture the head-cocked-on-one-side puzzled expressions of the dogs at the calls of "Oueet

[iddewes]

That's what I thought about Rhondda, I lived in Cardiff and Barry and always heard the 'th' not 'd'. Odd..and I did work with some people from the valleys, as well!

[lareinemisere]

*grins* I'm not quite old enough to remember Mssrs Oueelsonne and Eet, and I was in sixth form the day Mme Tatcherre got kicked out by her own party, but I know just what you mean about French vs English pronuncation of names. My own given name is of French origin, and it took me a while to get used to hearing it being pronounced so differently by French speakers, and even longer to feel entirely comfortable pronouncing it à la française when introducing myself to people in France.

I think, as muckefuck suggests downthread, it's really just a question of simplifying as much as possible, even if that does mean some oversimplification, and hoping for the best. I doubt the average gamer is going to make a serious effort to pronounce the Welsh words correctly, anyway (given that my OH's gaming group still mostly say 'Freeberg' for 'Freiburg' in another game they all play, much to the annoyance of the German graduate in the group).

[cityofmist]

'Wy' is often pronounced 'oy', for example in 'wyth' (eight).

'Dd' is the soft 'th' as in 'the' or 'breathe', not the hard 'th' as in 'thought'.

'Y' is often a hard 'i', as in 'with', for example in 'mynd' (to go).

I'm not sure 'ayow' really gets across the sound of 'ew'.

[muckefuck]

I'm not sure 'ayow' really gets across the sound of 'ew'.

It really makes no sense of all to say that e has the sound of 'e' in 'bet' and then describe ew as 'ayow'. It's the e in ew which has the "short" sound (IPA [ɛ]) whereas bare e alternates between this the sound of French é (IPA [e]) depending on its position in a word.

[lareinemisere]

Thanks - will make some amendments accordingly. :)

[dougalbug]

Be careful when saying "oe" is pronounced "oy" - for example, most of Wales will pronounce Pencoed as "Pen-coyd", but people who actually live there may sometimes say "Pen-code. (It's always pen-co-ed in my head! Don't get me started on Llanelli!)

[muckefuck]

Every one of those vowels has dialect variations in Wales--ae can be [æ:] in the South, au is distinct from ai in the North (and, as a plural ending, pronounced [a] in the North and [e] in the South), etc. In an introductory guide for linguistically unaware readers, certain oversimplifications are inevitable. I think it's enough just to weed out those things no one would say anywhere (like 'ayow' for ew).