So in English, there are many useless letters or letters that sound the same such as C/K/Q, G/J, etc. Are there any letters that could be replaced or removed from Welsh such as X or Q in English? If so, what are they?
No, not really. All the consonants in Welsh are individual sounds, and unlike English donāt have other letters that sound the same. For instance, C and G are always āhardā and can never be replaced by Ks/Qs (because we donāt have them in our alphabet to replace it with) or Ss (e.g. āsoftā Cs as in cistern) or Js (which is a later acquisition to the Welsh alphabet anyway).
In spoken Welsh there are sometimes letters omitted (F at the end of a word is a common one), but this is just the colloquial version, like dropping an initial H (holiday > āoliday) or a middle/end T (water > waāer / might > mighā) in some English accents, but thereās no reason for removing them.
Perhaps over a long time dropping that F, for example, might occur organically (after all, modern Welsh has certainly changed from Old and Middle Welsh), but itās still necessary - particularly in formal writing - for now.
There are a few double 'nās that I wouldnāt mind losing
Mostly Welsh spelling is a breeze compared to English, but the āIs it one ānā or two?ā does catch me at times.
Generally the double n occurs because of the stress boundary. So, if (as is normal) the stress is on the last but one syllable, and that syllable ends in an n, and the final syllable begins with a vowe, the n sound carries on into the following syllable, creating a double n. TONnau - abSENnol - LLANnerch. This also happens to the r in cyrraedd (say it to yourself in your best Cardi accent!).
Donāt ask me whatās going on with annibendod, though.
My candidate for superfluous letters would be Cymru/Cymry/Cymri - though admittedly in the north i and u have subtly different sounds.
I like that explanation! I hadnāt seen it put so succinctly before, and I shall keep it in mind, testing every word that I have doubts about to see if it complies to the āruleā
What about the letter U? Doesnāt it sound like I?
They only sound the same in Southern Welsh. In Northern Welsh there is a distinct difference between them. (As RobBruce has already stated in his answer two posts up)
GPC reckons thatās from anniben, which is just an- = English un- (Latin in-, Greek an-) plus diben āend, aim, purposeā. The an- usually nasalises the word that follows, whence things like annibyniaeth, annheg, and annealladwy. (But not **annghofio, which would be a step too far!)
Well what about the letter J then? Couldnāt we give it any better purpose since itās already idle now? How about, we use it for the Ch sound in loch, very similar to the Spanish J? Then words like Chwech could become Jwej. And the [dzh] sound could just be written Di since [dzh] is just a palatalized [d] sound anyway.
But then weād need to introduce some kind of diacritics to help us distinguish between di- in **gĆ redi and di- in dianc, if we donāt want to start saying [dzhank]ā¦
Then why not write the [dzh] sound as ādsā? Is that any better?
Yes, you are correct.
DĆÆanc?
I still donāt like the idea, though.
Having started my learning journey by trying to transcribe songs without any knowledge of the Welsh alphabet, I can confidently say that the Italian alphabet, with just a handful of additions and variations, would work just fine.
We should launch a petition for twinning the languages!
Thatās a really interesting observation! Iām going to help a friendās (English) choir to learn a couple of Welsh songs, and Iāll be starting with the alphabet. Singers understand Italian vowels and it struck me that making that parallel to them would be a really good starting point.
Iām curious to hear how it will go with the singers, now!
For vowels, the only sound that does not exist here is one of the āyā sounds (as in āynā).
Then, from time to time itās just a matter of nuances (like shorter, longer, more open etc).
But theyāre not as important as with English, and they may also change quite a bit in native accents in both countries, and when singing, lenghth will vary a lot according to the music soā¦!
Just for fun, or maybe a little extra inspiration, I enclose my own pronunciation guide to sing along one of the first I tried to learn (MYND by Datblygu of course), when I had no knowledge of Welsh at all !
Itās all Italian alphabet except the those in capital letters or phonetic:
Y = Welsh Y in āynā
LL = as in Welsh
TH = as Welsh TH (or one of the English TH)
Ć° = as Welsh DD (or the other English TH)
vowels in parenthesis are those that are pronounced shorter
Isnāt it facile facile?
HEN ACTOR SYāN CARUāR TAFARN
hen actor sin cariār tavarn
YN GOFYN CWESTIWN CALL I MI
Yn govin cuestiun caLL i mi
AM BETH OāN IāN MEDDWL AM
am beTH onin meĆ°(u)l am
EU FFILM OLAF
ei film olav
SAI WEDI GWELD E OEDD FY ATEB I
Sai uedi gueld e oiĆ° vY ateb i
CODODD AR EI DRAED, CODODD AR EI DRAED
codoĆ° ar ei draid, codoĆ° ar ei draid,
A MYND MYND MYND MYND
a mind, mind, mind, mind
ER MWYN CAEL RHYW DIORSAF
er muin cael rhiu diorsav
CYN MYND āNOL IāR ORSAF
k(i)n mind nol iār orsav
MYND MYND MYND
mind, mind, mind
NID OEDD
n(i)d oiĆ°
POPETH YN IAWN
PopeTH Yn iaun
POPETH YN HAPUS
PopeTH Yn hap(i)s
AMSER IDDO SYMYD
amser iĆ°o sYmid
Why complicate things like that?
āChā as in Welsh is already known by all Welsh speakers, and quite obvious and familiar to people speaking or having a little knowledge of several other languages (although with slightly different nuances).
In Italian we donāt have J officially in the alphabet, except for borrowed words.
It usually matches our āsoft gā sound it like āiā, and sometimes āiā (although most people in the past tended to pronounce it always as āiā, while nowadays always as in English).
But seems pretty harmless to me!
That works really well!
The problem with first-language English speakers (as one myself!) is that we have a lot of diphthongs that we donāt spell out, and a single vowel sounds differently in different words/letter combinations, and there is a horrible tendency to transfer that over into other languages. But when we sing Italian (and Iām sure there are more nuances when it comes to speaking it!) we use a single, bright āaā (similar to the Welsh one), a single, bright āeā (again, similar to the Welsh) and so on. So anyone who has learned to sing something like āti amoā properly in Italian (with a pure āoā sound at the end) can reproduce the same vowel sounds for Welsh singing. Takes eternal vigilance from the conductor, though, to keep reminding people!
Somewhere Iāve got a pdf of a local newspaper from Salento in Griko, and I have to say that seeing Welsh spelt with Italianate orthography is somehow considerably less weird than seeing Greek get the same treatmentā¦
Iāve never seen it written, but Iām sure it is!
(on a side note, itās sad that so many languages still showing influences from peoples moving centuries back are disappearingā¦ )