Welsh orthography

Welsh borrows a number of words from English. Those words are spelled according to Welsh spelling conventions, for example: "bus", "buck", "bucket", "car", "noggin", "gob", "slogan", "flannel", "truant", and "gaol". Non-native letters in Welsh The letter ⟨j⟩ has only recently entered into Welsh orthography, but is still debated: for newly borrowed words from English which retain the sound, even when it was not originally spelled ⟨j⟩ in English, as in ("garage"), ("giraffe"), and ("fridge"), although often these words have Welsh equivalences or are spelt without ⟨j⟩ such as ("garage"), ("giraffe"), and ("fridge"). Older borrowings of English words containing resulted in the sound being pronounced and spelled in various other ways, most commonly approximated by ⟨si⟩ with the sound as in ("Japan"), and ("jacket"). The letters ⟨k, q, v, x, z⟩ are not part of the Welsh Alphabet. However, these letters are used in foreign proper names and their derivatives: , . They are also sometimes used in technical and other specialized terms, like kilogram, queer, volt and zero, but in all cases can be, and often are, nativised: , , and . == History ==

, without or The earliest samples of written Welsh date from the 6th century and are in the Latin alphabet (see Old Welsh). The orthography differs from that of modern Welsh, particularly in the use of to represent the voiced plosives non initially. Similarly, the voiced fricatives were written . By the Middle Welsh period, this had given way to quite a bit of variability: Although were now used to represent , these sounds were also often written as in Old Welsh, while could be denoted by . In earlier manuscripts, moreover, fricatives were often not distinguished from plosives (e.g. for , now written ). The grapheme was also used, unlike in the modern alphabet, particularly before front vowels. this was not liked at the time, but has become standard usage. In this period, (capital ) was also used interchangeably with , such as the passage in the 1567 New Testament: , which contains both and . Elsewhere, the same word is spelt in different ways, e.g. and . The printer and publisher Lewis Jones, one of the co-founders of , the Welsh-speaking settlement in Patagonia, favoured a limited spelling reform which replaced Welsh and with and , and from circa 1866 to 1886 Jones employed this innovation in a number of newspapers and periodicals he published and/or edited in the colony. == Letter names and sound values ==

"N" and "S" indicate variants specific to the northern and southern dialects of Welsh. Throughout Wales, an alternative system is also in use, in which all consonant letters are named using the corresponding consonant sound plus a schwa (e.g. for ). In this system the vowels are named as below. : ;Notes Diphthongs : ;Notes == Diacritics ==

Welsh makes use of a number of diacritics. The circumflex (ˆ) is mostly used to mark long vowels, so â, ê, î, ô, û, ŵ, ŷ are always long. However, not all long vowels are marked with a circumflex, so the letters a, e, i, o, u, w, y with no circumflex do not necessarily represent short vowels; see . The grave accent (`) is sometimes used, usually in words borrowed from another language, to mark vowels that are short when a long vowel would normally be expected, e.g. (a cough), (a pass/permit or a lift in a car); (smoke), (a mug). The acute accent (´) is sometimes used to mark a stressed final syllable in a polysyllabic word. Thus the words (to empty) and (decline) have final stress. However, not all polysyllabic words with final stress are marked with the acute accent ( "Welsh" and "forward/onward", for example, are written with none). The acute may also be used to indicate that a letter w represents a vowel where a glide might otherwise be expected, e.g. (two syllables) "manly", as opposed to (one syllable) "root". Similarly, the diaeresis (¨) is used to indicate that two adjoining vowels are to be pronounced separately (not as a diphthong). However, it is also used to show that the letter i is used to represent the sequence which is always followed by another vowel, e.g. (to copy) pronounced , not . The grave and acute accents in particular are very often omitted in casual writing, and the same is true to a lesser extent of the diaeresis. The circumflex, however, is usually included. Accented vowels are not considered distinct letters for the purpose of collation. == Predicting vowel length from orthography ==

As mentioned above, vowels marked with the circumflex are always long, and those marked with the grave accent are always short. If a vowel is not marked with a diacritic, its length must be determined by its environment; the rules vary a bit according to dialect. In all dialects, only stressed vowels may be long; unstressed vowels are always short. An unmarked (stressed) vowel is long: • in the last syllable of a word when no consonant follows: (good). • before voiced stops b, d, g and before all fricatives (except for ll) ch, dd, f, ff, th, s: (son), (favourite), (thing), (night). An unmarked vowel is short: • in an unstressed (proclitic) word: . • before voiceless stops p, t, c (gate), (sheepfold) and before all consonant clusters (except for those that start with s or ll) (saint), (hedge), (April). When preceding the final syllable in a multisyllabic word, y is most often pronounced as : (whole) . In monosyllabic words, or in the final syllable of a word, it follows the same rules as other vowels: (day) (North) ~ (South), (island) (North) ~ (South). Before l, m, n, and r, unmarked vowels are long in some words and short in others: : (The last four examples are given in South Welsh pronunciation only since vowels in nonfinal syllables are always short in North Welsh.) Before nn and rr, vowels are always short: (ash trees), (to win), (stone). In Northern dialects, long vowels are stressed and appear in the final syllable of the word. Vowels in non-final syllables are always short. In addition to the rules above, a vowel is long in the North before a consonant cluster beginning with s: (witness). Before ll, a vowel is short when no consonant follows the ll: (better) It is long when another consonant does follow the ll: (hair). In Southern dialects, long vowels may appear in a stressed penultimate syllable as well as in a stressed word-final syllable. Before ll, a stressed vowel in the last syllable can be either long (e.g. "better" ) or short (e.g. "hole" ). However, a stressed vowel in the penult before ll is always short: (clothes). Before s, a stressed vowel in the last syllable is long, as mentioned above, but a stressed vowel in the penult is short: (measure) . Vowels are always short before consonant clusters: (saint), (hair), (witness). == Digraphs ==

: U+1EFA and U+1EFB. While the digraphs ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th are each written with two symbols, they are all considered to be single letters. This means, for example that (a town in South Wales) is considered to have only six letters in Welsh, compared to eight letters in English. Consequently, they each take up only a single space in Welsh crosswords. Ll itself had actually been written as the ligature in Middle Welsh. Sorting is done in correspondence with the alphabet. For example, comes before , which comes before , which comes before . Automated sorting may occasionally be complicated by the fact that additional information may be needed to distinguish a genuine digraph from a juxtaposition of letters; for example comes after (in which the stands for ) but before (in which n and g are pronounced separately as ). Although the digraphs above are considered to be single letters, only their first component letter is capitalised when a word in lower case requires an initial capital letter. Thus: : , etc. (place names) : , etc. (personal names) : (other sentences starting with a digraph) The two letters in a digraph are only both capitalised when the whole word is in uppercase: : (as on a poster or sign) The status of the digraphs as single letters is reflected in the stylised forms used in the logos of the National Library of Wales (logo) and Cardiff University (logo). == See also ==