Pronouncing Irish and Welsh Words
To native speakers of English, both the Irish and the Welsh languages pose unique difficulties of pronunciation. The spelling of Welsh includes combinations of letters that often confound English speakers; the spelling of Irish is especially difficult, as so many letters are silent, or are there (like English's silent "e") to tell you how to articulate other letters.
Although it is not a formal requirement course, it will help you to get into the spirit of medieval Celtic literatures better if you make a sincere effort to at least approximate the pronunciation of the Welsh and Irish names, as least of the more important characters and places. I do encourage you to consult the pronunciation guides available in several of the texts we will be reading (in Ciaran Carson's translation of The Táin, for instance, or in Sioned Davies's translation of The Mabinogion). I also offer here a few very general remarks on how to start pronouncing these languages semi-correctly.
Welsh
Irish
Although it is not a formal requirement course, it will help you to get into the spirit of medieval Celtic literatures better if you make a sincere effort to at least approximate the pronunciation of the Welsh and Irish names, as least of the more important characters and places. I do encourage you to consult the pronunciation guides available in several of the texts we will be reading (in Ciaran Carson's translation of The Táin, for instance, or in Sioned Davies's translation of The Mabinogion). I also offer here a few very general remarks on how to start pronouncing these languages semi-correctly.
Welsh
- The stress is almost always on the second to last syllable.
- Y and W are both vowels; Y is pronounced either as “uh” or as “ee”.
- W is usually pronounced like “oo”. But when W is before another vowel, it sounds more like English W.
- C and G are always hard as in “cold” and “gold”.
- CH is pronounced like a raspy “kh” (as in German, Russian, Greek, etc.).
- The letter U is pronounced like “ee”.
- A double FF is pronounced like an F as in English, but a single F is pronounced like V.
- A double DD is pronounced like the “th” sound in “this” or “thither”.
- A double LL is pronounced at the sides of the mouth, almost like a TL.
- Example: "Culhwch" is thus pronounced "KEEL-hookh" (not "Cull-wich"!!!)
- Example: "Rhiannon" is pronounced "rhee-ANN-on"
- Example: "Manawydan" is pronounced "mah-nah-WUD-an"
- Example: "Dafydd" is pronounced "DAH-vith"
Irish
- The stress is pretty much always on the first syllable. (One exception would be Cúchulainn, whose name is actually two words — Cú ("hound") + Chulainn ("of Culann").)
- C and G are always hard as in “crap” and “Gryffindor”.
- Most of the other consonants are pronounced as in English at the beginning of a word, but somewhat differently in the middle or at the end.
- At the end of a word or in the middle of a word, B and M are pronounced as V, C is pronounced as G, T is pronounced as D, and D is pronounced as the voiced “th” sound as in “then” or “the” at the end or in the middle.
- CH is pronounced like the raspy CH as in Russian, Greek, German, etc.
- Vowels are even stranger. In general, they have their “continental” pronunciations, as in Italian, Spanish, or German. Note that certain vowels, esp. E and I, affect the pronunciation of any consonants near them, making an S, for instance, sound like “SH” and a D sound more like a “J”.
- Many, many vowels are never actually pronounced in a given word, and are there only to make the consonants sound right. More often than not, the vowels you see in non-initial syllables are liable to be pronounced just as “uh” (as in "cup").
- Example: Étaín is pronounced "AY-deen".
- Example: Finnabair is pronounced "FINN-ah-vuhr".
- Example: Diarmuid is pronounced "DYAR-muhd" or almost even "JAR-mudge"