Americans Pronounce Welsh County Names (Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr, Ynys Môn...)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
- Two Americans try to pronounce Welsh county names. Starting with Blaenau Gwent, talking a stroll through Gwynedd, and ending in Wrecsam, here are all 22 of Wale's UK counties, said by Americans 😂
Do you know how to say the Welsh counties we got wrong? Let us know down in the comments!
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The south Walian person is bang on with most of his pronunciations. I’m from North Wales and the northern pronunciation is miles off. Doesn’t sound like he’s a welsh speaker tbh and the ability to speak welsh honestly does make a massive difference. Happy to help you guys out as a native welsh speaker to verify next time if you’d like?
I am from South Wales Dude I was up North Wales about 2 years ago and it's a different world up there butty... Everyone was talking Welsh. It was beautiful and because I couldn't speak Welsh?? The Northerners were treating me like an Englishman.... hahaha
It was a fantastic few days with my bird. The mountains were peaceful all the time.
The Welsh folk up North kept the language alive.
Story Goes ????? When Julian Ceaser and the Romans invaded around 2000 years ago,
The people in South Wales supposedly rebelled?? and Julius Ceaser wiped them completely out, and the Welsh language with them. It's the law in South Wales now
Kids start learning Welsh as soon as they start school. Take care brother ...
@@jamesdaunter8557 Nice story about Julius Cæsar, but it's not true. The Welsh language was very strong in South Wales for more than a thousand years after the Romans left.
@@jamesdaunter8557 The North-East is English-speaking.
I grew up in Colwyn Bay, and most of the South Walian stuff sounded right to me, too. Just the odd 'oo-wee' for 'wy'. I'm not fluent, but I think 'Blaenau' in the North is sometimes pronounced 'bligh-nah' and in the South 'bligh-neh' (or is that just words like 'blodau'?). Am I right? I've also heard that it's the 'rh' the non-Welsh-speakers find hardest to pronounce, not 'll' and less 'ch'. I"ve lived in Scotland now for 20+ years, so I've forgotten a lot of my Welsh :( Hiraeth!
Iolo Llywelyn I agree. The South Walian pronounced it like I would but I think the North Walian was way off. He was pronouncing a lot of them like an English person would and these were all the Welsh versions of cities and counties.
2 americans doing a better job pronouncing Welsh than most English do in Wales
Oh my thank you! :D
@@WanderingRavens True, from an Englishman.
Yes! You're bang on, lol
Totally agree I live in Cast e (as in egg) ll (flem sound 😂) Nedd or to make it simple for non Welsh people Neath 😂 and one that makes me laugh is Llanelli pronounced by non Welsh folk as Lan e (as in egg) Lee 😂. I have to admit though even though there are contradictories in pronunciation between North and South I just accept that anything North of Aberystwyth accept the North Pronunciation and anything South of Aberystwyth accept the South Pronunciation don't fight it as it's just easier 😂
not fare as they have the auto voice to help them
I have never in my 43 years of existence and living in North Wales heard anyone pronounce most of those words the way your Gog did!
"au" is always pronounced as "aye", never "ow" (as in German, for example).
"ae" is pronounced "aye" too, but there is a very slight, almost imperceptible difference between it and the "au" sound. It's never "ey".
"y" (on its own) is always pronounced "uh", never "ee".
"y" in the middle of a word like Caerdydd is pronounced "ee".
"w" is generally pronounced "oo" in words like Morgannwg. Never "ih". But it is both a vowel and a consonant in Welsh (along with "y"). Its pronunciation depends on where it appears in a word.
Welsh is a very phonetic language, once you understand how to pronounce the individual sounds, and there are rules on pronunciation depending on where the sound appears in a word. It's not like English where the same combination of letters in a word can be pronounced in multiple ways, such as "cough", "bough", "borough", etc...
You're spot on with the "ff" = "f", and "f" = "v". You also spotted that we have "dd" which makes more of a hard "th" sound (as in "the"), whereas a single "d" is just a standard "d" sound. Our "r" sounds are pronounced with a slight trill, and this is exaggerated a bit more if it's an "rh". "ch" is always pronounced the same as it is in "loch" (Scottish lake). And finally, there's the "ll" sound, which is almost impossible to describe in any way that makes sense!
As an aside, on "Wrecsam", that's the only one on the list that is a Welshified version of an English name. The town was originally an Anglo-Saxon settlement which ended up on the Welsh side of the border, and whose name eventually became Wrexham, but as there is no "x" in Welsh, it's been changed to "cs".
And finally, as another interesting aside, the words for "bridge" are the same in both Welsh and French - "pont". It's one of those words the Welsh adopted when the Romans arrived.
hi im from north wales and the second guys pronounciation sounds waay more accurate than the first
Indeed. The first voice is useless :)
Agree - ae is like “eye” and y is “uh”.
Definitely
Agree the North Wales guy presumably doesn't speak Welsh at all and he's plain wrong on the first three - it's not a regional thing
Er for a second I thought you were calling Grace a guy! 😁
The problems that English speakers have with Welsh is that there is a different alphabet. In Welsh, the letters y and w are vowels
Ohhh! That explains why they kept pronouncing "w" as an "o"
@@WanderingRavens For context, the Welsh alphabet goes: a b c ch d dd e f ff g ng h i l ll m n o p ph r rh s t u w y. And only one of those double letters is pronounced the way you'd expect it to as an English speaker.
@@smockboy also to point out an English v is a Welsh f and an English f is the Welsh ff. Which as a dyslexic English speaker who's second language is Welsh is very confusing and hard to spell stuff right
@@WanderingRavens The Welsh w is more double-u than English, and closer to oo. Fair play to you for trying.
The North Walian butchered most of the prononciations. I'm not convinced he's even Welsh!
I agree! I’m north walian and I agree with the south walian
@@angeladavies898 I'm not welsh but some of my family are and the north sounded off to me but I just thought it was because my family was from the south.
I'm not convinced he's even human. Sounds like a voice synthesiser to me... and one which hasn't really been "trained" in Welsh, either.
@@ftumschk When I heard it in the preview at the start of the video I thought "Oh no, they're using Google Translate"
They sound very scouse up their to be fair.
Caerdydd is cardiff just it's the welsh name for it.
The guy from North wales didn't sound like he could speak welsh, his pronunciations were way off.
I'm from North Wales by the way and I'm a native Welsh speaker
Glad you said that I know there are some differences between North and South but didn't think they were that pronounced
@@JohnHardingIngvar Despite it's comparatively small size, there are noticeable differences between how they pronounce words in North and South Wales (and that's not counting the different dialects that you get from county to county). North and South are the most pronounced because they're the opposite sides of the country. They even have different words - for example, to say "I can" in Welsh, you'd say "dwi'n medru" in the North and "dwi'n gallu" in the South. Milk is "llefrith" in the North and "llaeth" in the South. The general rule is that the people of South Wales think they speak the language of God, whereas the people of North Wales KNOW they speak the language of God 😉
Wow! Didn't realize the differences went beyond pronunciation! Thank you for explaining :D
hello., great attempt by americans living in paris,.....probably montparnase its great there...
as for the second guy it was way more accurate, than the first .,... the first actually sounds like cornish not welsh...at all...
there is only tiny or slight difference in accent between north and south welsh*....most notably on milk... llaeth/lleffrith..
.
also iam from wales, and a native speaker too...also understand cornish... that is why i said the first speaker sounds cornish lol...
I speak South Walian but I thought the North Walian sounded off too.
The South Wales accent is a lot more accurate, don’t use the first one
He is using both north and south
Ignore the supposed north Walian “expert” you have. I am a Welsh speaker from North Wales and his pronunciation is way off. I cannot fathom why he could be so bad!
Yeah from the start I was like what's he saying?
I'm from mid Wales but probably heard more North walian pronunciation growing up even if I was taught more southern words and it did not sound right to me even Wrecsam which 40 mins from me and is northern he didn't seem to pronounce quite right.
@@francisluke4739 Same for me, I'm a Cardy, my south Walian friends all say I sound like a gog but I tend to use 'southern' words like llaeth. Gotta concur with everyone else, I know our gog cousins butcher the language ;-) but the the guy they used sounded nothing like I've ever heard, certainly wasn't Welsh!
Grace is spot on with her observation about patterns. I’m English but I have made my home in Wales. My kids are Welsh speaking and I’m a welsh learner to try and keep up with them - when you get your head around the fact that Welsh is phonetic and doesn’t have the irregular pronunciations that you get in English, it’s actually really logical
That's really cool that you brought up your kids to be bilingual. I have Welsh parents but born in England and they forgot to teach me, so I'm trying to learn. Definitely easier to guess the pronunciation once you know the phonetics compared to English.
As a Welsh person, this episode makes me so happy. You did well for a first try.
Just remember that those are the Welsh names of places, most places have an English name too that is either;
- A completely different name altogether, ("Abertawe" - "Swansea")
- A translation, ("Pen-y-Bont" - "Bridgend")
- A similar but easier to pronounce name, ("Caerdydd" - "Cardiff")
- An English spelling of the Welsh name but pronounced the same, ("Caerffilli" - "Caerphilly")
- Exactly the same spelling and pronunciation so having both on the road signs would look silly.
Which version you use depends on which part of Wales you are in and who you are talking to. Generally if the road signs have the English message above the Welsh one then you'd use the English names, although "Welsh First" road signs have been spreading South into predominantly English speaking areas.
And I don't know where you got the "correct" pronunciations from but some of them are WAAAAY off how the locals actually pronounce them. I think it's like the difference between "RP" English and Everyday English.
We pronounce "Sir" more like "Seer".
"C" is always a "K" sound, never an "S".
The "W" thing was a bit of a red herring, I think you were reading too much into it. It's either a "W" or "U" (halfway between an "uh" and an "oo" sound) depending on context. "Morgannwg" is just "Morgan" with a bit more emphasis on the "a", followed by "ug". "Wrecsam" or "Wrexham" could easily have been spelled without the "W" altogether.
"ae" in things like "Caer" is just like "Aye", as in "Aye Aye, Captain.
You spotted that "F" is actually pronounced as a "V" with "Ff" being a proper "F" sound.
"U" becomes "I" and "Y" becomes "U". So "Merthyr Tudful" becomes "Merthur Tidville".
There are a lot more rules including double letters like "Dd" and "Ff" and don't get me started on mutations. It's a really complicated language.
Yes, the mutations are something else! Gaelic (Scots/Irish) has them too.
Hi Tom! Brilliant comment. Thank you for writing this up! Your explanations of the pronunciations cleared up a lot for us. No lie, we are VERY tempted to start learning Welsh :D
What does "mutation" mean in this context?
@@WanderingRavens The rules are incredibly complicated. It's where certain letters in certain words change depending on the context. They are shortcuts to assist with fast pronunciation. Similar to Cockney where they drop their H's.
For example, "Wales" is "Cymru", but when talking about something "In Wales" it becomes "Yng Nghymru", pronounced "Un Gumree".
In other languages you wouldn't bother actually writing down these shortcuts, you'd stick with the normal spelling as the word itself doesn't actually change, but in Welsh and other Celtic languages you do.
I told you not to get me started.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Welsh_mutations
@@WanderingRavens A mutation happens to the first letter of certain words when they're preceded by pronouns, prepositions etc. For example:
a chair = cadair
the chair = y gadair
my chair = fy nghadair
his chair = ei gadair
her chair = ei chadair
your chair = dy gadair (informal "your")
your chair = eich cadair (formal "your")
our chair = ein cadair
Cardiff = Caerdydd
in Cardiff = yng Nghaerdydd
from Cardiff = o Gaerdydd
to Cardiff = i Gaerdydd
There are rules for mutations but, as a first language Welsh-speaker who "mutates" naturally, I'm glad I didn't have to learn them! To be honest, if you just used the un-mutated word every time, you'd still be perfectly comprehensible; it just sounds a bit better with the mutations than without.
Hi I'm from Caerffili (English version of the name is Caerphilly), Cardiff is the English name given to Caerdydd. All counties at least in South Wales has an Welsh version and a English version of the name. I don't know if it's just my family but we also called Welsh people as a whole as Walians (pronounced whale-ians) and then add north, south, east or west to the beginning. Thank you both for doing this, Wales doesn't get as much acknowledgement as it should. Ardderchog (Excellent) video guys 😊 🏴
So glad you enjoyed the video! And thank you for answering those questions for us!! x
I'll translate caerphilly to american for them - cu philly.
😂
I mean Rhondda Cynon taff doesn't have 2 names
When I lived in Caerphilly, it was easier for me to just say Philly or C'philly because my accent makes people giggle.
Cymru am byth!
Speaking as someone from South Wales, you guys are excellent at picking up welsh pronunciation guys. I am very impressed.
Wow! Thank you! :D
I was looking forward to this video so much and you did not disappoint! I’m South Walian and speak Welsh. I hardly reconised a lot of the North Walian pronouciations! You did very well especially since you did the Welsh versions of the names! Most of them we use the english versions, unless you’re speaking Welsh.
Caerdydd - Cardiff
Abertawe - Swansea
Pen y Bont ar Ogwr - Bridgend
Bro Morgannwg - Vale of Glamorgan
Sir Benfro - Pembrokshire
Castell Nedd - Neath
Sir Gaerfyddin - Camarthenshire
Casnewydd - Newport
Caerffili - Caerphilly
Sir Fflint - Flintshire
Etc
Tips to remember with the Welsh language:
- W and Y are vowels in Welsh along with A E I O and U.
- W and Y can be pronounced different ways depending on the word.
- Welsh has letters in the alphabet that English doesn’t; Ch, Dd, Ff, Ll, Ng, Ph, Rh and Th.
- Mutations are just there to make things easier to pronounce. E.g the ‘G’ in Sir Gaerfyrddin was originally a ‘C’ but is mutated.
- There are 3 different types of mutation: Soft, Nasal and Aspirate.
- Mutations happen for a variety of reasons and only happen to certain letters, not to all of them.
- Don’t worry too much about mutations, I wasn’t taught about them until I did my Welsh A Level in school. Until then we were told we didn’t need to worry too much about them.
- As a whole we would say that we are Welsh. But if we want to specify where in Wales we’re from (North, South, East, West) we would use the word Walian. So for example, if I was to say I’m Welsh, you would know that I’m from Wales but not know where in Wales. If I was to say I’m South Walian then you would know that I am from South Wales. However you would never use Walian on its own e.g you wouldn’t say ‘I’m Walian’ it would always be I’m Welsh.
Fun fact: North Walians are often referred to as ‘Gogs’ because the Welsh word for North is Gogledd!
One, da iawn i ddau ohonot ti!
Now let’s see you put them on a map!
I'm from North Wales and speak Welsh and I hardly recognised a lot of the North-Walian pronunciatia.
It's good to offer the Welsh the love and respect they deserve.... Especially after the North & South line you had up a couple of weeks back! ☺️
Shows you pay attention to your comments section It's good of you both Ravens!
You guys did so well!! This was so fun. As you realised, Welsh pronunciation tends to mostly follow a the same set of rules throughout (unlike English where one letter can be pronounced a thousand different ways)
To confirm/answer some things:
What we call ourselves:
The Welsh : Y Cymry
Cymro (singular masc)
Cymraes (singular fem)
North Walians / South Walians
Gogs is short for Gogledd which means North
CH, DD, FF, LL, NG, PH, RH, and TH are all singular letters
A, E, I, O, U, W and Y are all vowels
Ch tends to come from the back of the throat/top of the mouth
LL tends to come from the tongue touching the top of the mouth
F is pronounced like V whilst FF is like the English F
AE tends to make an AY / I sound
U is usually an EE sound
Cardiff is Caerdydd in English
Cardiff is our capital city
Sir means shire (Sir Gaerfyrddin - Carmarthenshire)
Caerfyrddin (the G is mutated) is also a town name and it comes from the latin Moridunum (sea fort) which is the same root as Merlin’s original name, Myrddin which also means sea fort (it’s rumoured that Caerfyrddin was his home town)
Ynys means island
Caer means there’s a fort/castle there
Llan means there’s a parish there
Aber means there’s a a river mouth there
Bont/Pont means bridge
Loved this so much!
I'm not convinced the North Welsh guy is saying things correctly.
He should have known Blaenau Gwent, but the difference in pronunciation between north and south is huge so it's hard.
He's not and I'm a North-Walian.
he’s not saying them correctly AT ALL, it has nothing to do with him being supposedly a Gog, he just doesn’t speak Welsh or he just isn’t Welsh at all.
I always see people saying that welsh has no vowels, and if you look at it with an English perspective it's true, but in welsh, y and w are vowels, so that's why lots of words are seemingly lacking in the vowel department
The French is affecting your accents. Mixture of Welsh French 😂
For sure! I struggle to pronounce any word that I don't know without the French accent now 😂😂
@@WanderingRavens putain c'est pas possible quoi
as a native speaker from Sir Gaerfyrddin i absolutely loved this video! i think you guys would really enjoy learning the cultural differences between the english and welsh because we're very different! loving the welsh representation though guys, thank you!
We know very little about Welsh culture. Do you know of any good books or documentaries where we could start learning?
@@WanderingRavens this vice series is a good little starting point and it's all about our food :) enjoy! th-cam.com/video/CTfgHBCfUF0/w-d-xo.html
The north Wales guy is way off, which is a little weird. There isn't that much differentiation, he's just wrong.
It depends where in the North he is from.
You did damn well! Most of us English struggle just as much with Welsh pronunciation, even though the rules aren't actually too hard to follow. I spent a couple of years covering Wales and the South West on the National Rail Enquiries phone lines, and I can only thank the Welsh callers for their understanding. Fortunately they're a good-natured people!
Glad to hear we didn't crash and burn! These are tough nuts to crack, but you're right, the pronunciation seems fairly consistent. Unlike English 😂
Hi, few tips on pronouncing Welsh dd together is like the English th in 'them'. One f is a v sound and two ff together is an f in English. Ch together is pronounced like the Scottish 'Loch'. Ll together is the difficult one, if you put the tip of your tounge behind your teeth and let air escape from the two sides it makes the ll sound, sorry if that doesn't make sense :) when you know how the letters are pronounced, you can read anything as it a phonetic language :)
Thank you for the tips, Cara! We're happy to learn that Welsh pronunciation isn't as intimidating as it looks!
I hear a lot of English newsreaders and reporters pronounce the ll with a sound like an English cl or kl so that, for example, Llanelli is something like "Clanecli" which I don't think is quite right.
@@WanderingRavens To expand on that, dd is like the th in them, but a th is like the th in thing.
@@trickygoose2 Yeah, Welsh 'll' sound simply doesn't exist in English (whereas there are similar sounds for the others) so when non-Welsh speaking, native English-speakers try it approximate it they typically settle on 'cl' which isn't quite right but it's close enough. They get points for trying.
@@smockboy the ch sound doesn't really exist in English either but most people know how to pronounce Loch so can manage it I guess ( when I tried to learn Spanish there was a sound like it that no-one english could get or explain then I got a tutor who also spoke Welsh and pointed out it was thech sound suddenly it made sense 😆)
Yup they're not that easy, and the north Welsh was definitely off.
In welsh the alphabet is 28 letters long, but does not have the following letters from the english alphabet: J, K, Q, V, X, Z which is where all the weird double letters and sounds come from. Welsh vowels are AEIOU, plus W and Y which is why they make different sounds, like vowels do in english.
A good effort all around, as I know it's not easy to master those sounds on the spot and it comes with time and repetition (like being around place names that don't have english equivalents)
Nowaday it has a J its different from when you and I went to school.
I am from Wales, specifically Cardiff ( Caerdydd) and one of my favourite towns is Tenby. It’s Welsh name is Dinbych-y-pysgod which translates to ‘Fortlet of the fish’. It is in Pembrokeshire (Sir Benfro) a beautiful part of Wales.
Also known as “Little England Beyond Wales” to some of us!
I'm from Penybont and absolutely adore Tenby!
I guess Tenby is a butchered anglicised form of Dinbych, and they decided to give on the -y-pysgod bit of the name...
Welsh is a phonetic language unlike English so the pronunciation is not particularly hard once you know what sound the letters make in Welsh. The Welsh alphabet is different to English and "dd", "ll", "ff", "th" and "rh" are considered single letters in the alphabet that make very different sounds to the single letters (like l, f or d, not sure how to describe them haha). These are the Welsh language names for the counties and some have English names too, Casnewydd is more commonly called Newport and Caerdydd is Cardiff (for example). "Sir" means county I believe or is the Welsh equivalent of the English "shire". To be honest I'm impressed how close you got on a few and how quickly you picked up on certain aspects of the pronunciation.
The "North Wales" guy is definitely not from North Wales, I mean his pronunciation is way off. I'm from North Wales and the South Wailian sounds more accurate.
Agree - I'm from Bangor and I thought the same!
The first synthesised voice is catastrophically wrong in most cases; it didn't get the capital of Wales (Caerdydd) right, and it didn't even know simple phonetic rules like "f = v" in Welsh! The second voice gets it right every time , and seems to have a real Welsh-speaker behind it... either that, or it deserves a Turing Prize :)
2.28 OMG you are having a go at pronouncing where I live.. Bridgend Mid Glamorgan ... AKA ... Pen-Y-Bont Ar Ogwr, the 2nd version is the one I use.. But I say it as Pen-Ah-Bont Ar Ogoor..
Loving your very awesome attempts at the counties..
Best wishes from Wales ..
Welsh is actually unlike most western languages in that the way words are written is EXACTLY how they are pronounced, they just have a different alphabet to English. some things like "ll" are a single letter with its own sound
Their faces at the 'ch' sound on sir Ddinbych 🤣🤣
You guys did dda iawn in all fairness, i know someone who's lived in Llandudno for 30+ years, and pronounces it 'clun-dud-no', which is completely wrong 🤣
Also there’s a big Welsh speaking community in Patagonia, Argentina , by now of course they are mostly native Argentinian in looks and customs but have held on to Welsh language .....
Extra fun fact of the week :- there are 29 letters that make up the Welsh alphabet , but there are no k, q, v, x, z. In the Welsh alphabet
Extra fun fact, there is no J either in the Welsh alphabet, but Jones is the most common surname.
Look up the reason and history of Welsh surnames for interest.
Eric's hair!!!!! I mean, I like it but.... Oh my god!!!! Also, don't worry about pronouncing it wrong because I don't think anyone in the UK except the Welsh can actually pronounce any of these.
😂❤️️😂❤️️
Yep I always let Welsh customers say their address
😂😂😂I'd have to say you're correct there. I find English people find welsh very hard to pronounce, but Europeans and americans are able to roll their r's and pronounce ch correctly 😊
Well, as an Englishman, I'm proud of both my Welsh heritage and the fact that I can pronounce Welsh
Welsh ff as in English "off", Welsh f as in English "of".
Brilliant! Thank you!
The guy from the South is so much more accurate
Kudos for you for doing this. A lot of our neighbours across the border wouldn't bother.
I live in Sir y Fflint (Flintshire). The Sir is just Welsh for Shire.
I'm glad you picked up on the patterns too. Once you get to know the sounds, Welsh is actually pretty phonetic and straight forward.
Top vid guys 👍
So glad you enjoyed it!! We are really liking Welsh. It seems a lot more predictable and consistent than English XD
@@WanderingRavens Did you know that Tolkien used Welsh (Cymraeg) as his inspiration for the Elvish language in Lord of the Rings?
I visited a high school in Michigan as a visitor. They asked me to say something in Welsh. I said the Hail Mary and they thought I was just speaking Elvish ☺
Sir = county (although it's literally 'shire' - in the same way that many English counties end in 'shire') so 'Sir y Fflint' literally means 'Shire of Flint' (or as the English would say: 'Flintshire')
South Waliens and North Waliens are the terms for people from north and south Wales. Cardiff is the English spelling of Caerdydd, Sir is the Welsh for Shire (As in the MontgomerySHIRE is Sir Drefaldwyn), yes Gwyneth is a Welsh name (I have an Aunty Gwyneth, thanks to some Welsh routes) and the name translates to Gwyn = White, and Geneth = a girl. Grace is right F is pronounced 'V' where as Ff is pronounced 'Eff' Ch is pronounced the same as in the Scottish Loch or the German Composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Some of these places are towns and Cities not counties though.
Go on, give Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgochgerrychwryndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch a try.
Eric, the hair cut suits you, not that you need it, but you look 5 years younger.
Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions! And for helping us figure out how to say "ch" :D
And oh dear, we've been hiding from Llanfairpwllgwygll.... 😂
@@WanderingRavens there are some videos on youtube about how to pronounce it, including some with some catchy songs, it's not as hard as it looks really
As a postman I can say that they are all counties. For example, Abertawe (Swansea) used to be in West Glamorgan, but now it's the county of Swansea, and Neath & Port Talbot used to be both in West Glamorgan too, but are now in the county of Neath/Port Talbot.
That northern pronounciation is completely off, I can't believe he's a northerner. (A native northerner writes...). The southerner is much better. "Sir" means "county", though southerners do pronounce it with a lisp. Yes, you're right - "ff" is pronounced "f", "f" is pronounced "v".
I am Welsh and my boyfriend is English and he cannot wrap his head around the Welsh language what so ever, I think you guys did quite well!
Post: video delayed due to dentistry
Eric: has haircut
Conclusion: eric gets his hair cut at the dentist
His rates were too reasonable to pass up!
Barbers used to do dentistry
@@rickyg1247 Just dentistry or general surgery? I believe that the origin of the red and white barbers pole is that it represents bandages and blood.
I got them all right because I am Welsh. Lol. It's great to see others trying to speak our language. I love it. Thank you for this.
Caerdydd is the Welsh spelling for Cardiff!
Good to know! Eric was on to something there 😏
@@WanderingRavens i was giggling hearing you guys try pronounce where im from
To be more accurate, Cardiff is a weak attempt at coming up with an English spelling for Caerdydd.
Translated to me by my, at the time, Welsh girlfriend (From Llanelli) then improved on a few years later by a co worker who was born and raised in Cardiff as, and this is as phonetic as I can get it, "Kyra~deeth". It's a great place where you don't need to wave a taxi down in the street, a taxi will actually stop and ask YOU if you need a ride!!!
With regards to "the South Welsh accent". Which one do you mean? The Llanelli accent differs from the Swansea accent which in turn differs from the Cardiff accent. I suppose that only applies to the trained ear though. Everybody else just hears "What's occurrrrring?" or "Whos coat's that jaaacket? Shockin' weather we're 'aving innit?" X¬D
@@baylessnow It's really amazing how much the Welsh accent changes between places that are only a few miles apart. Whilst at university in London, I was friendly with Welsh people who lived not 15 miles away from me, and our mutual (English) friends were amazed at how different our accents were. We were only from different valleys, but we might as well have been from different countries :)
10:52 Also I love Grace’s reaction when she was like “Powys like Paris...I was right. It’s Paris but not.” Lol 😂
And then “He can’t say it, SAY IT” lol 😂 11:08
I live in Cardiff and yes, Caerdydd is the Welsh word for Cardiff. I was very impressed with your pronunciations guys! All children in Wales have to learn Welsh in school, and I always struggled with it 😫
Great job guys! Ps, the hair is GWYCH!! ❤🏴
Ooo, what does gwych mean? :D
@@WanderingRavens Gwych = Great 😊
Really it is easier if you just learn some basic rules: F is pronounced as V, FF is pronounced as F, and DD is pronounced as TH. Y is a vowel and often pronounced "Uh" The welsh name Meredith - which has been changed to a girls name , is actually a boys name and is spelled Meredydd with the emphasis on the second syllable,: "MuRedith" - it shows the pronounciation issues quite well
Thank you for the tips!
Of course Meredith is a boy's name! What idiot ever applied it o a girl?
@@allenwilliams1306 Americans. just like Rhys became Reece
@@simonwatkins3236 ...and don't forget Morgan! It's not just Welsh names, either; if I'd just had a beautiful baby girl the last thing I'd do would be to name her after a hunky hero of the Trojan War, but that's exactly what happened to Paris Hilton :)
He’s changed his hair,but not his shirt ?! 😂❤️(It looks good btw💜)
The hair change just means we're one step closer to changing the shirt 😂😂
Wandering Ravens Great !! 👍🤣💕
Does he only have one shirt? Is this because of lockdown? I'm new here.
Nat Yeah,but it’s just a joke because he always wears the same one in all of their videos😂
🏴 good effort , I'm Welsh and struggle with the language 🙈🙈😂😂. When reading Welsh you can't treat it like English letters, Welsh has its own alphabet.
For example, d = d but dd = th and as Grace worked out ff = f but f = v. Ll and Ch are both classed as single letters also but I really don't know how to put their throaty sounds into text 🙈🙈😂😂
Loving the vids
Best wishes
Steve
I was looking forward to more places beginning Ll....
Omg more Welsh names plz.... i love this xx
Gwen is a welsh derived name meaning white or holy. It's a shortening of the name Guinevere (don't know the welsh spelling). I think all of those kind of similar starting G names are derived from Welsh.
Good to know! Thank you for answering that question for us :D
Correct - specifically, "gwen" is the feminine form of "white", the masculine being "gwyn". BTW, the Welsh for Guinevere is Gwenhwyfar.
Dw i'n byw yn Pen-y-bont ar ogwr
yes Gwyneth is a welsh name, it means happiness. another common one is Rhiannon as well as many other common names.On the F sounds, correct FF is f, single f is v.
As someone learning welsh and with welsh speaking friends, it is hard. studies show it takes a native english speaker roughly 5500 hours to learn, much like japanese will.
Like Tom😉
exactly. Dont forget Morgan, Owen, Dylan, Evan, Reese, Trevor, Meredith, Megan, and of course the many many variations of Gwen
@@Reignlief Interestingly, although I've often seen Meredith as a girl's forename, it's actually male, originally meaning something like "lord of battle" or "great lord". A number of Welsh princes and kings of the Middle Ages had the name, albeit often in its original Welsh form of "Maredudd" (pronounced pretty much like Meredith).
Wow! We didn't know it was such a difficult language! How long have you been learning Welsh for?
@@WanderingRavens on and off for about 2 years total, though my french and german are far better.
Sir = shire (i.e. county)
Ohhhhh that's good to know! We were very mistaken with thinking it was a pronoun then 😂
Just asked the same question, thanks for clearing that up.
@@WanderingRavens Sir meaning county becomes Shire in England, as in Berkshire, WIltshire etc. The law enforcers in Counties were called Shire Reeves, which eventually became changed to Sherriffs.
LLoyd is another welsh name...
John Pierpont Morgan Sr. who founded J.P Morgan, was also from welsh ancestry..
Morgan is a common surname in wales...
also of the same ancestry is Sir Henry Morgan (Welsh: Harri Morgan, c. 1635 - 25 August 1688) was a Welsh privateer...
Captain Morgan is a brand of rum produced by British alcohol conglomerate Diageo. named after him..
Tredegar House (Welsh: Tŷ Tredegar) is a 17th-century Charles II-era country house mansion in Coedkernew, city of Newport, Wales.
For over five hundred years it was home to the Morgan family, Lords of Tredegar; one of the most powerful and influential families in wales.
"The grandest and most exuberant lavish houses in europe"....
Much Love from Bridgend, Pen-Y-Bont ar Ogwr
Oh! Are the two names translations of each other?
@@WanderingRavens For the most part there are yes, the ones you guys done in the video were the Welsh translations which are hard to pronounce in the best of times for non Welsh speakers, for Example with "Caerdydd" is the welsh name for the Capital city, which in English is Cardiff, and "Sir Gaerfyrddin" is Welsh for Carmarthenshire. If you ever do this again with the Welsh counties or Towns try and see whether or not they have an English spelling (most do) however when it comes to towns etc that's where it becomes a little more complex
Wandering Ravens Yes. ‘Bont’ is a mutated version of ‘Pont’ which means Bridge and ‘Pen’ in this context means ‘end’ (although it can also mean ‘head’)
So literally translated as ‘The end of the bridge’ hence Bridgend!
You’re probably wondering about the ‘Ogwr’ bit now?
‘Ogwr’ is the Welsh for Ogmore.
So the the whole county name literally translates as ‘The head/end of the bridge on the Ogmore’.
Basically there’s a bridge that crosses the river Ogmore.
That’s where the ‘Ogwr’ bit comes from. But most of the time the ‘ar Ogwr’ bit gets dropped off. Most people would just say Pen y Bont but the most common way you’ll here it is the English way which is Bridgend.
As for the mutation. Try saying Pen y Pont. It’s not easy is it? Because it’s not natural and doesn’t role of the tongue easily. Now try saying Pen y Bont. That’s much better right. That’s basically why mutations exist. To make things easier to pronounce!
If you want more on the history of Bridgend here’s a Wikipedia page: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgend
I grew up in South Wales hearing the Southern Welsh way of pronouncing and you did much better than I did! I was also trying to work out the English names for them from memory. Also, love the hair, Jean-Pierre! 😂
Glad to hear we did okay! And glad you like my French locks 😂
What about an attempt at impersonating regional accents next?
Brilliant idea! We love all the accent variations throughout the UK. Are there specific accents that you'd have us add to our list?
@@WanderingRavens Yorkshire, Geordie, Scouse, Glaswegian, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, cockney, Brummie, Bristol, Cumbrian. Off the top of my head. Maybe a one sentence each conversation in each accent? Oh, forgot Mancunians.
Lancastrian? Think Wallace and grommet.
@@markrichardson3421 don't forget the places below the M4, the South 😉👍
@@wencireone aren't they all just diluted cockney? 😁Sorry couldn't resist. Seriously though other than Cornish, Bristol and cockney i don't really know any other really distinctive southern accents. Maybe Norfolk (that's southern to me)
As a Welsh speaker studying French and German I love hearing your French pronunciation come into pronouncing Welsh words!
You might find it interesting to look at Breton too if you haven’t already which is spoken exclusively in Brittany (north west of France if anyone hasn’t heard of it :) ). Breton is a sister language to Welsh and Cornish which both come under the Brythonic group of Celtic languages.
Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic), Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) and Manx are all sister languages in the Goidelic group of Celtic languages. You could say the Brythonic languages and the Goidelic languages are cousins :)
Reminds me of that joke about the Welsh Scrabble player. He had a crisis of consonants.
Nice one! Mind you, in reality, Welsh has more vowels than English (a, e, i, o, u, w, y), and some pairs of letters are in fact classed as one letter, even though they don't have a single "symbol" of their own (dd, ch, ng, ll, ph, rh, th). So, whilst a word like Llanuwchllyn (in terms of the English alphabet) contains 12 letters with only 2 vowels, it's only 9 letters in Welsh, and the vowel/consonant ratio is pretty balanced: 5 consonants, 4 vowels.
Wow! Good to know! :D Thank you!
@@ftumschk That's a great way of explaining it. When I was little, I could never understand why English people struggled with Glyndyfrdwy. I've always thought of Y as being a vowel.
"I like the Welsh language because it was obviously invented by a dad who lost its Scrabble."
- Jimmy Carr.
Hi , I'm from Abertileri in south Wales , Not a fluent Welsh speaker but enough to get by ... I really liked this video .... Diolch 👍
It's ok, only the Welsh really know these places, some of the road signs have English spellings and translations of information
Welsh is a difficult language but we really love the way it sounds!
Really? What is the English translation of Aberystwyth, Llandudno, Dwygyfylchi or Crib Goch, for example?
@@t.a.k.palfrey3882 ok, good and valid point, perhaps it's just major places and information, as quite possibly only remembering the road signs coming into Wales on the M4 😁👍
@@t.a.k.palfrey3882
Major destination routes include, Machynlleth, Porthmadog, Pwllheli, Caernarfon, Llanelli, Llangollen, Corwen, Berws Y Coed, Blaenau Ffestiniog as well.
My wife and I travel to Wales each summer to meet friends in Machynlleth, Powys and love the Welsh language.
We do try to speak a little but my accent and pronunciation is best described as barely existing.
The two main places we visit are Blwch Nant yr Arian for the Red Kites and the Prosiect Gweilch Dyfi (Dyfi Osprey Project) near Derwenlas.
Welsh is a lot more regular in pronunciation than English. I love the Welsh words for microwave and jellyfish.
ooo, what are those words? :D
@@WanderingRavens the welsh word for microwave is melcrodon and welsh word for jellyfish is slefrod mo^ r
Emma Jones as a English person I’ve always heard microwave is something like poppetyping. Lol.
seriously though
I love the Welsh word for carrot 🥕!!
😁....
Its 'moron'!
@@markgibson3034 you are correct according to my Welsh speaking friends!
I know it's an older vid, but a couple of things to note!
The w does indeed make an oo vowel sound (more like book and hood than food), but it can act as a normal consonant, especially before another vowel.
The y is normally pronounced like "uh", except in the last syllable of a word, where it's "ee" or "ih".
Cardiff is the capital of wales 🏴
Sounds lovely!!
Lots of places in Wales have an English version of the Welsh name. Cardiff English name Caerdydd Welsh name (same place). There is a small town on the coast called Llantwit Major in English and Llanilltyd Fawr in Welsh. John from Llwynypia in the Rhondda. Oh and Welsh is an English word meaning foreigner. The Welsh for Welsh is Cymraeg and Wales in Welsh is Cymru.
@@JohnHardingIngvar Llanilltud (Church of St Illtud) became the laughable Llantwit (Church of St Twit), presumably because someone in the dim and distant past couldn't be arsed to make an effort to pronounce Illtud's name properly. They could at least have chosen a less insulting approximation that didn't turn him into a twit!
@@ftumschk yeah how do you get from Illtyd to twit!
@@JohnHardingIngvar ... laziness and/or a complete disdain for the language, I guess :)
Tudful is not the usual spelling of the second word Tydfil would be far more common.
Love this video!
Double D sound Is a th sound as if you’re about to say the
A single f is usually a v sound and the double f is an f sound.
LL is quite a difficult one to do and explain unless you’re welsh 😂 it’s as if you’re doing a th sound and then just place your tongue a bit further back and it’ll make the LL sound.
AU is pronounced like eye, at least where I’m from in South Wales
There are no silent letters in Welsh. ff=f, f=v, y=“uh”, u=i (“ee” usually), dd=th, d=d, but “ll” (which is a single letter in the Welsh alphabet) is the really difficult one. It is usually mispronounced by the English (and Yanks) as a guttural clearing of the throat, but is actually produced to the back and side of the mouth by gently pushing air through the gap between the tongue and the palate and teeth. This separates the men from the boys.
"ll" = Thl
Incredible comment! Thank you for this information, Allen! I think this video has inspired us to learn some Welsh!
@@maninthestreet01 No: “thl” would be “ddl”. Believe me, my family came from Pwll, near Llanelli, and I really did have to get this right!
When they actually said some of the places i know them but a lot of them had the Welsh spelling and not the English. If you do come back to the UK and go to Wales you with see all the road sign have both the Welsh spelling and English spelling on them. Plus i would recommend a trip to Wales it is a beautiful and scenic places and so tranquil. I really don't know why my great-grandparents move to England from Wales. Personally i would have stayed in Wales.
Interesting. As an Englishman who once had a girlfriend from the Rhondda Valley I never seriously tried to learn Welsh (apart from the odd word) but I did the next best thing and got to know the pronunciation. And my verdict? Ironically, pronunication turned out to be the least of all worries. Even the "ll" sound wasn't as difficult as I expected. Other features of the language seemed harder to grasp, e.g. word order (VSO as opposed to SVO), and just to say "I am" seems more complex than in French, German or Spanish. Also the vocabulary - learn French, German or Spanish and similarities to English leap out at you immediately, even though differences in other ways soon become clear. Welsh offers no such initial easy ride... yet look below the surface and what do we find? Welsh has no words for "yes" or "no" , just as in English we say "I do", "I don't", "I will", "I won't" etc instead. That's exactly how Welsh works and I'm sure it's more than coincidence
Godo post - especially the VSO/SVO distinction, and the fact that there are few similarities between English and Welsh words, in contrast to French and German (which are, in large part, ancestors of English). Whilst there's some truth in what you say about "I do" etc, Welsh does have simple words for "yes" and "no" ("ie" and "na"), it's just that it's grammatically better in Welsh to answer a "do you?" question with an "I do" than a "yes", which is just as acceptable in English.
Letters are not sounds hence the difficulty some people have with English pronunciation. Cymraeg (Welsh) existed centuries (possibly millenia) before the Roman alphabet was introduced to Britain. Many, though by no means all, British place and river names have their roots in the Brythonic languages. Some English counties have retained elements of their earlier Brythonic tribal names - Kent (Cantiaci), Devon and Cornwall (Dumnonii & Cornovii) etc. Add to this the various foreign influences, Saxon, Norse/Danish and French and we now have the colourful language we now speak, where many different words mean the same thing, or different things, depending on how they are spelled and the context in which they are used, regardless of pronunciation. This is why we haven't been invaded for almost a thousand years - nobody knows what the heck anyone is saying - let alone meaning.
Im from south wales and i love how you put our national amethon around the begining.
also our alphabet is diffrent ours has 29 letters where the english one has 26 just a fact lol.
also cardiff city is the capital of wales.also gwyneth is my mothers name lol but instead of dd its ff.
i live in merthyr tudful but in english its merthyr tydfil.
The pointy thing on the ô. Is called a “tor bach” in Welsh. It means “little roof”.
Sorry - correcting myself- it’s “tô bach”.
Welsh is the nearest thing remaining to the language spoken by the majority of the pre-Roman ancient Britons. The kingdom of Strathclyde, which covered the Lake district and SW Scotland was one of the other later survivors until they got swamped by influxes from neighbours. Cornish is supposed to be similar as is Breton from NW France.
True. The very name Strathclyde was originally Welsh/Brythonic ("Ystrad Clud"), and there are many place-names in Scotland and NW England that still bear the fingerprints of their Welsh/Brythonic origins.
Greetings from sunny (for a change) Rhondda Cynon Taf!
Dd is always a "voiced" th, as in this and that. Th is an "unvoiced" th, as in thick and thin. Grace is spot on with the difference between double and single F. Ch is towards the back of the mouth, but not so far back as to be in the throat.
I think the W in Wrecsam is missing because it's not actually Welsh, but a Welsh spelling of the English name - Wrexham.
All in all, I'm impressed. You did better than most of my English friends would. Da iawn!
Thank you for clearing those up for us! And for the pronunciation tips! These were very helpful :D
Many people in the coastal districts of North Wales probably have more affinity with the northwest of England than they do to south Wales and the cities of Cardiff and Swansea. I think quite a few English people from in and around Liverpool and Manchester have holiday homes in places like Rhyl and Llandudno and often retire there too. Most put up a second tv aerial to receive English tv programmes in addition to the local Welsh channels which are no good to them when broadcasting programmes in the Welsh language that they wouldn't understand.
Am reminded of Terry Pratchett's fake Welsh town of Pant-y-Girdle.
or llamados (read backwards)
Lord of the rings reference was correct because Tolkien visited Cymru/ Wales as a boy on hoildays. He refers the Welsh as the Elves
As a Welsh Speaking Welshman from North Wales may I offer you some hints :
a. forget English, Welsh is a phonetic language.
b. in Welsh the stress is always on the first syllable.
c. there are no silent letters in a word and each letter is always pronounced the same way.
d. the Welsh alphabet (29 letters) does not have the letters " j, k, q, v, x, z" although "J" may be used for borrowed English words.
e. the Welsh alphabet has the additional letters " ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th,
f. there are 7 vowels a,e,i,o,u,w,y. ("y" is also a consonant)
f. "e" is always pronounced like the "e" in English "egg"; "i" is always like "e" in English "teeth"; "f" is pronounced like English "v"; "ff" is like English "f":
g. Sir is County or Shire: Caer is Castle:
I may have misheard your introductions but the second voice was from North Wales rather than the first? Did I mishear?
Amusing vid! Welsh name places are a bit tough, haha. 😄 Eric and Grace having another "you are me, and I am you" day 😛
😂❤️️
I'm from South Wales and man its embarrassing that I can't pronounced alot of Welsh words properly let alone the names of counties. Pronunciation isn't exactly my strong suit even with some English words and English is my first language lol. Maybe one day I'll get a handle on the pronunciation side of things who knows 🤣
One summer in the early 1980s, I lived a few weeks in Abertawe. Based on that experience, I think most of the people who live there would pronounce it “Swansea”. Swansea was primarily English-speaking, and Abertawe is the name of the place in Welsh.
Dw i'n dod o Abertawe, I'm from Swansea.
Many Welsh place names actually mean something so Abertawe, literally means mouth of the river Tawe, in the same way that Aberystwyth, means mouth of the river Ystwyth.
@@JACK305 Indeed. Interestingly, as you probably know, "Swansea" hasn't got anything to do with swans or the sea, even though it's by the sea. It in fact comes from _Sweyns-ey,_ which means "Sweyn's island/inlet", possibly because the city was reputedly founded by the Viking warrior Sweyn Forkbeard.
Guys, I love what you are doing in this episode. I wish that more people would learn our language. I can help you learn it by sending you "how to say it" essays of Welsh words (there are some exceptions, but Lady Raven is kinda correct, it comes from the throat. That, phonetic mutations and the Ll are the hardest things to learn in the world's most poetic language.). DM me if you want to learn. You did get quite a few spot on whilst you were learning on the fly. Aarddethog i chi.
An English woman (YamYam to be exact) living in South Wales. Children here have to learn Welsh. Its a nightmare with homeschooling at the moment. The road signs in Wales have both the Welsh version and the English version of place names. I think you need a tour.
Enjoyed the vid. Being from Merthyr Tydfil I thougnt you did really well. Once you appreciate that Welsh is based on a different alphabet eg d, l, and c are letters but double L, double d, ch etc are also considered as letters with their own sounds, it gets easier.
We hadn't thought of it as being a separate alphabet! That does make it easier. Thank you :D
"Sir" = "shire". It's an English word adopted into Welsh. Also, in Sir Ddinbych we're hearing a Welsh version of an Anglo-Saxon name (though based on the Celtic Din-_. The English name for the county is Denbighshire, but the Anglo-Saxons would have pronounce the "bigh" as Welsh does. It's the Engligh who lost the guttural sound.
Amazing video as always!
But you need to Irish next. There are some that are simple but I am sure there are others that are not. If you don't fancy that, I would definitely do boys and girls names!! Irish names are notoriously hard to pronounce, if you don't know how!!
I’m from South Wales, Blaenau Gwent :) literally love this video, although some of these example pronunciations were so bad😭
You were brave attempting the English counties, but attempting the Welsh? 🤣👍🏼 Great how you were able to spot patterns with the letters, much better than the majority of Brits, many don’t even try 😊
Grew up in Wales and learnt a little Welsh in school - albeit a long time ago now - so really loved watching this as it made me laugh and brought back some fond memories of Wales - Diolch yn fawr iawn! I think the new hair 'do' makes you look like 'the one and only' Chesney Hawkes, Eric (although you may be too young and too American to know who he is)! Grace, make sure Eric drags himself away from the mirror and looks after your needs properly - get well soon xxx
You're doing a lot better than my English next door neighbours I can tell you. I actually have English neighbours both sides of me, one from London, one from Torquay. The ones from Torguay do desperately try to say the Welsh place names, they love it so much here that they really do try, and they even support Wales in rugby but it's funny to hear them trying to get their tongues around the words, Merthyr Tydfil which is just over the mountain from Tynewydd in the Rhondda where we live, is a prime example. The ones from Lobdon do not try...lol. But they love it here too.
When I moved to Ynys Mon (Anglesey) from Devon I was advised to learn the sounds of the Welsh alphabet first as the vast majority of words are pronounced phonetically - f = v, dd = th etc.
I did some research and:
Cardiff is actually "Caerdydd". You guys were doing the Welsh name of each county. Some Welsh counties are the same in Welsh and English, like Powys and Gwynedd, but others are different, one of them being Cardiff - Caerdydd.
The "Sir" part of Sir Benfro, Sir Morgannwg (aka Bro Morgannwg), Sir y Fflint, etc. is actually the Welsh for the English and Scottish "shire."
Sir Benfro is Pembrokeshire, Bro Morgannwg is the Vale of Glamorgan, Sir y Fflint is Flintshire (not surprisingly), Sir Gaerfyrddin is Carmarthenshire, Sir Ddinbych is Denbighshire and Sir Fynwy is Monmouthshire.
The voiceless velar fricative /x/ or the Welsh "ch" is coming from the the back of the tongue and onward. It's made by pushing out through the mouth only (it's an oral consonant), is articulated with the back of the tongue (its velar property), is produced without vibrations of the vocal chords (its "voiceless" property) and is articulated by pushing air only with the lungs and the diaphragm (it's a pulmonic consonant).
The Welsh "w" is more like a double "o" then a single "o". The South Welsh accent saying Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr pronounced it more like "pen-uh-bont-ar-og-oor", that's what I hear, though.
Welsh has a slightly different alphabet, including double letters! So Ch is a separate letter to C and H, like Dd, Ll, Ff, Ng, Th and Ph are also letters, which explains the different pronunciations! Our language also has mutations, so having certain words in front of certain words will cause the first letter of the second word to alter! The county’s with ‘Sir’ at the start is a perfect example of this! Sir means County so for example with ‘Sir Gaerfyrddin’ the place is actually called Caerfyrddin, but because the word Sir alters a name of a place it changed it from a C to a G! The welsh language is an incredibly complex and beautiful language! Though the grammar is really hard to explain so I hope this made sense!
South Walians!
Also, there are variations of Welsh that isn't just boiled down to North and South Welsh, as in South Wales there are 2 varieties of Welsh dialects with varying pronunciations and words from each other. For example, most people would say that the "ae" Caerdydd is pronounced as an "i", where as I would pronounce it the same as "air" in English. I would also spell Caerdydd as Cærdydd instead.
Considering Breton French is closely related to Welsh - they are part of the same language family - French pronunciation in terms of the rhythm of the language is a good starting point.
Welsh itself had fewer letters in it's alphabet and as such some letters do double duty in terms consonants and vowels: w as a vowel is used like a 'oo' or double 'uu' when used with 'r'. And with 'y' it becomes an 'oi'.
The letter 'u' is best thought of as two 'ii's joined; heddlu (police) is pronounced 'heth'lee'.
The letter 'y' can be several sounds and like the Latin alphabet it's interchangeable like I, J & Y (I is used for J in Welsh bit pronounced like a Y as in yellow); so it can be 'ugh' or 'e' and with an 'r' it becomes a 'ee' with a stress on the 'r' sound. And 'Y' at the beginning of a word is like a capital 'U' but small 'y' becomes a vowel and becomes 'i' so Ynys (island) is pronounced Un' iss with stress on the 's'. Likewise Ystradgynlais is 'Us trad 'gun' lice because the small 'y' is a vowel and becomes 'ugh'. And 'a' and 'i' together change the 'a' sound like putting an 'e' at the end in English.
Oh and you are right to intuit 'dd' as a TH but it's more like a 'd' with a soft 'th' after; 'ff' is hard 'F' while single 'f' is always 'v'.
It just takes practice but you did very well because isn't easy for strictly English speakers. I grew up an English speaker but heard the Welsh pronunciation all my life but I still make mistakes.
No such language as Breton French. It’s just Breton (Brezhoneg). It ended up in Brittany when Brythonic speakers left Devon and Cornwall in and around the 6th C. The Amoricans who lived there (Amorica at the time) were also Celtic speakers, possibly Godeilic, but probably Brythonic, like the arriving Britons. The two languages merged, but the incomers speech was the main ingredient.
It has four main dialects, and is most closely related to old Kernoweg (old Cornish), but both are related to Welsh (Cymraeg), which is the descendant of the Brythonic languages of that part of the island of Britain (Pryddin). Brezhoneg is of course heavily influenced by Norman French, and the modern language has a distinctly French feel to its pronunciation and accents. There are some loan words from French, but no more than Welsh has loan words from English.
@@Twittler1 We had a Breton assistant French teacher who got a job-experience placement at our (Welsh) school as he was studying Welsh at university. Interestingly, as he'd previously taken a degree at Glasgow, he spoke English with a hybrid French/Scottish accent. All told, he was a bit of a linguistic mongrel!
@@Twittler1 Thanks for the informative reply. Too be honest I said "Breton French" to avoid confusion (people forget Parisian French is not the only language spoken in France: Breton; Gascon; Occitan, are all spoken but like Scots Gallic are in some danger) but you were entirely right to correct me, and then some, which I appreciate because I love information like a chocoholic loves Cadbury.
to do ch sound its a back of the through sound and then to do the dd sound you need to do the tongue as if you are doing the th sound but then you need to have the sound from the back of the throut to be able to do it so basically you need to say the mouth movement so thst sound comes out
Hi Ravens!
As a Welsh speaker, I tend to discourage artificially generated internet pronunciations. A lot of the examples were way off and I think they probably confused you a lot more.
For example you were correct with your pronunciation of the double ‘dd’ at the end of Caerdydd.
Maybe you could ask Welsh native speakers to record themselves saying them correctly?
South Welsh here- Welsh actually has its own alphabet separate to English, and has 7 vowels - AEIOUWY. "W" often has to sounds, similar to "A". When it has another vowel beside it, it has the same sound as in English. If it is by itself- it becomes a "true vowel" and makes an "oo" sound instead.
Also, the letters "DD, CH, RH and FF" are entire letters by themselves. You picked up on this, however. Good job!
One last thing- Welsh is deceptively easy to read. You may feel like you want to round off letters like in stereotypical french accents (e.g turning Gs into extended Js) when in fact, welsh almost always pronounces ALL of its letters. It just may take a few tries to find the letters containing double english (Dd, Ff, Ch and Rh) and pronounce those letters correctly
Well done guys, you did really well! And very well done on picking up that ff is pronounced as an English f, and a single f is pronounced as an English v. Not many people get that 😊
Thank you! 😄