The phonology of Welsh is characterised by a number of sounds that do not occur in English and are rare in European languages, such as the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative and several voiceless sonorants (nasals and liquids). Welsh has a stress accent, which usually falls on the penultimate syllable in polysyllabic words.
A notable characteristic of Welsh is the three kinds of consonant mutations (soft, nasal, and aspirate) which affect the beginnings of words and which are also found internally within compound words. Welsh also has vowel mutations, usually occurring when a word is extended by a suffix (including certain suffixes which were formerly pronounced but are now lost).
Consonants Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:
LabialDentalAlveolarPost-alveolarPalatalDorsalGlottalNasalStop()()Fricative()Trill Approximant()Lateral
Symbols in parentheses are either allophones, or found only in loanwords. The sound generally occurs in loanwords, e.g. sŵ ('zoo'), although this is usually realised as in northern accents, e.g. . The postalveolar affricates and occur mainly in loanwords, e.g. ('chips') and ('jelly'), but also in some dialects as developments from and , e.g. from ('devil'). The voiceless nasals occur mostly word-initially, as a consequence of nasal mutation. These nasals have recently been interpreted as sequences of + and are often pronounced as such. Initial is colloquially realised as in the south, e.g. ('six') pronounced .
Fortis and lenis Some linguists argue that Welsh consonants are better described in terms of fortis and lenis rather than voiced and unvoiced. According to these scholars, not only ~ and ~ but possibly also ~ and ~ can be described as fortis–lenis pairs. The fortis consonants and , when they end a monosyllable such as 'map' or 'little' or 'ugly', tend to have a longer duration than the other consonants. Voiceless does not occur at the end of a word, but is considered to belong to the fortis group. despite being partially unvoiced is considered lenis.
Stops
The stops are distinguished from by means of aspiration more consistently than by voicing, as are actually devoiced in some contexts. This devoiced nature is recognised in the spelling of as , although is orthographically for historical reasons. In words where are preceded by a vowel, phonetic studies have shown that at least in some dialects of North and West Wales these consonants are not only followed by aspiration, but also preceded by a period of aspiration. The aspiration before the consonant is shorter than the aspiration that follows it.
A study of mainly North Welsh speakers showed that the fortis plosives are about twice as long as the lenis , whether in word-initial or in word-final position.
When and are followed by or , as in 'dog' or 'mouth' they are slightly palatalised. In some dialects (such as that of Bangor district) a palatalised and can also be heard before , but only in certain loanwords borrowed from English The palatalisation is sometimes reflected in spelling, e.g. or 'gate'.Both spellings are given by the dictionary Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru.
Fricatives The fortis fricatives are slightly longer and have less voicing than the lenis fricatives . The fricative was shown in a phonetic study to have more voicing than but less than . is usually found only word-initially or at the beginning of a stressed syllable; after a stress it generally disappears, e.g. 'queen' but 'king'. Consequently is not found finally in any word. In parts of south-east Wales, disappears in all positions, and in these same dialects is replaced by .
The fricatives are sometimes not pronounced at the end of a word, e.g. ('next') realised as or ('up') from ('mountain').
The phoneme occurs for all speakers in certain words, almost all borrowings (e.g., 'talk', 'whisper', 'shop', 'shampoo'). Otherwise its distribution varies regionally. In northern accents, it can occur when precedes , even (depending on region) across some word boundaries, e.g., ('I went'). In some southern accents it is produced when follows or , e.g. ('month').
The voiceless fricative is realised as uvular except by some southwestern speakers, who produce a velar variant .
Other consonants
The phoneme is pronounced as the voiced uvular fricative by some speakers in Dyfed and Gwynedd, in a pronunciation known as ('thick tongue').
In some dialects of north-western Welsh, the phoneme is consistently velarised or "dark" (, not to be confused with ) in all positions, but remains unvelarised or "clear" () in the south, except in rare exceptions where is found after , e.g. 'pretty'.
In some words such as 'country', 'wool', '(to) do', and their mutated forms , , , , the letter is not sounded as a vowel but is a consonant, realised by a rounding of the lips accompanying the or . These words are considered to be of one syllable only. As is usual with words beginning with a consonant, the definite article has the form , for example 'the woman'.
The voiceless sounds are generally "followed by a full, distinctly enunciated ". Thus 'my head' and 'in Cardiff' are pronounced as . Phrases like 'my money' and 'my shirt', which are spelled with hr, are pronounced with the following the : .
When a word traditionally ends with a stop or fricative + or , for example 'people' or 'window', there is a tendency to adapt it in spoken Welsh to remove the cluster. In some cases an epenthetic vowel, repeating the existing vowel, is added to make a two-syllable word: > , 'cancer' > , 'battle' > . If this strategy would result in an antepenultimate accent, the or may simply be deleted: 'window' > , 'possible' > . Occasionally, with , there may be metathesis: 'uncle' > . Words like 'dead', 'bitter', 'gay', which were formerly monosyllabic, are pronounced in modern Welsh with two syllables and the consonant is vocalised as the vowel ; but in 'mortuary' and 'bitterness' the is usually silent. When a word like 'ray of light' or 'breath' is pronounced colloquially with three syllables, the accent remains unchanged on the first syllable.
Geminated consonants Certain consonants in Welsh can be pronounced lengthened or geminated, even though this is not reflected in the spelling. This gemination only occurs after a strongly stressed vowel: thus the is long in 'answer' but short in 'answers', where the preceding vowel is unstressed. In many cases, geminated consonants are derived historically from a merging of two separate consonants.
According to Morris-Jones (1921), the consonants are double, and shorten the preceding vowel; he adds that and are also double in some words where they are written with and , and in a few words is double (although not shown in spelling). To these consonants Fynes-Clinton (1913) adds . However, in modern Welsh, not only these consonants but also other consonants such as are also sometimes pronounced lengthened after a stressed vowel. The distinction between long and short mentioned by Morris-Jones appears to be generally no longer made, so that 'waves' and 'tones' are usually pronounced identically, except for the half-long vowel of the latter in southern dialects.
In her thesis on the perception of stress, Williams notes that if the words 'to fight' and 'to tire oneself out' are compared, the length of the in the former, following a stressed vowel, is longer than the in the latter, where it follows an unstressed vowel.
The shortening of a double consonant to a single one after an unstressed vowel can be heard even when the consonants are in different words. Thus 'Port Talbot' is pronounced , and 'good health!' is pronounced . In phrases with nasal mutation of a voiced plosive, like 'in Bangor', the can be pronounced either single or double: .
This lengthening is found not only in Welsh but also in the English of speakers with a Welsh accent, especially of bilingual speakers. According to J.C. Wells (1982), the phenomenon is most obvious in voiceless consonants such as in words such as chapel, matter, nothing, missing, but can also sometimes be heard in words such as ready, ever with following a stressed penultimate. However, the phenomenon seems not to occur in some parts of South Wales such as Gwent and Cardiff.
Consonant mutations
An important feature of Welsh (as of other Celtic languages) is the system of consonant mutations, in which certain consonants are replaced by other consonants in certain contexts. These mutations are found both at the beginning of words, and internally in compound words. Three different types of mutation are recognised: the soft mutation; the nasal mutation; and the aspirate mutation. For example, 'father' (the radical form); 'his father' (soft mutation); 'my father' (nasal mutation); 'her father' (aspirate mutation).
Some mutations have a grammatical function (for example, distinguishing masculine from feminine, or subject from object, or noun from adverb). Other mutations occur automatically, for example after words such as 'from' (followed by a soft mutation), 'in' (followed by a nasal mutation) or 'and' (followed by an aspirate mutation), or when a noun is preceded by an adjective or prefix, e.g. 'old man' (soft mutation). The presence of the definite article blocks a mutation caused by a preceding word, e.g. 'from a door' (soft mutation), but 'from the door' (no mutation). The changes which occur in the soft mutation derive historically from lenition of consonants following a vowel. However, in many cases the vowel which caused the lenition is no longer pronounced, so in modern Welsh the soft mutation exists independently, occurring for example after the article 'the' in a feminine singular noun, but not in a masculine one.
In the soft mutation, which is the most common, mutate to . In colloquial Welsh, can mutate to . In certain circumstances, for example when a feminine singular noun follows the definite article, the other seven consonants mutate, but and do not mutate; this is called limited soft mutation. The soft mutation of is silent in most words, but in some borrowings from English, such as 'game', does not mutate.
In the nasal mutation, mutate into . In colloquial Welsh, and can sometimes mutate to and . Other consonants are unaffected.
In the aspirate mutation, mutate to . Other consonants are unaffected, or in some circumstances may undergo the soft mutation.
The fricative consonants and the approximants never mutate.
A contrary process called provection, whereby are hardened to , also exists in Welsh. One circumstance where this occurs is when a word has been extended by a suffix which historically began with : the disappears in post-stress position, hardening and doubling the consonant to which it is joined, e.g. + -ha > 'eating'; 'wet' + -hach > 'wettest'.
Provection can also occur in compound words where meet (or their soft mutations ). Thus + > 'everything'; + > 'restaurant'.
Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Welsh are as follows: Front Central Back short long short long short long Close Mid Open
The vowels and merged with and in southern dialects, but are retained in northern dialects. An acoustic study of ten speakers from North Wales showed that some speakers did not distinguish the short vowels and , although all clearly distinguished the long vowels and . The same study showed that long vowels clearly have longer duration than short ones both in Southern and Northern Welsh.