Yes this! The i sound in the middle is a long ee sound though, [quote=“robbruce, post:46, topic:11814”]
that stress is fairly consistent right across the word.
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I suspect that this might be one where there’s a difference between a notional underlying form & the way it’s actually realised - I’m thinking back to a question I asked about whether dy lyfr di should be your lover or your liver. In that case it’s theoretically a monosyllable, as written, even though it’s realised as two; so the -y- gets the monosyllabic treatment, and Bob’s your liver (so to speak).
I’m guessing that in this case your labialised ‘g’ is theoretically the underlying form, but native speakers trying to explain what they hear themselves as saying perceive it as @CatrinLliarJones described it.
I’m also guessing that a more SSiW approach would be to say what you hear, and hope/expect to muddle through just fine
ETA: Maybe it’s just like the Catholic Church allowing you to eat beaver on Fridays in the early modern period - in that it lives in water and has a scaly tail, so it’s legally a fish. So you say what you hear, but it’s still legally a monosyllable…
With llyfr/lyfr, I get that, underlyingly, it’s one syllable, but realised as two, with a rather helpful epenthetic vowel easing our pronunciation woes. That would explain ‘l(l)iver’ rather than l(l)over’ - though I have heard it pronounced as the latter, suggesting that some speakers have re-analysed it as being underlyingly di-syllabic.
With ‘gwlith’, I’ve never actually heard it pronounced, so can’t judge for myself whether native speakers pronounce it as two syllables but ‘feel’ there’s only one, or if it’s genuinely monosyllabic (using the labialised ‘g’, with no intervening vowel before the ‘l’).
Sorry, I realise I’m getting into phonology-nerd territory now but, hey, it’s certainly far more interesting (to me) than what I’m supposed to be doing at work… And, if nothing else, this new word is now very much committed to my memory!
After much wrangling with a temperamental old SoundCloud account on a temperamental old SoundCloud app on my phone. I finally gave up reinstalled SoundCloud and set up a new account called Word of the Day. I have recorded each word of the day and added them to each of my word posts in this thread. I hope this makes pronunciation easier!
Well, me neither [crossed in posting with @CatrinLliarJones, so I have now!] but I suspect it’s the same as the onset of words like gwlad or gwrando, which I have, and which I feel probably are realised with the -w- as a very short vowel
Another argument might be that soft mutation treats the *gw-*as two sounds rather than one – i.e. ei wlad, ei wrando just like ei weld o or mae’n well rather than ending up as ei lad. (I can’t remember the details off the top of my head, but there’s an argument in favour of the existence of labiovelars in Proto Indo-European that depends on them being treated as single consonants rather than consonant groups for the purposes of syllable-length and syllabification.)
Trefn = trevn (like heavn instead of heaven in old literature - one syllable) Trefnu = trevn-ee Trefnus = trevn-iss Trefniant = trevn-yant Trefniadau = trevn-yad-aye
Trefn means order or routine Trefnu means to order or organise Trefnus means orderly or organised Trefniant means an arrangement Trefniadau means arrangements
You can have trefn in your life or your house of office, or go to an establishment where there is no trefn at all.
You can trefnu a wedding.
You can be a person who is trefnus.
You can make a trefniant on behalf of someone or make a trefniant of flowers.
You can make trefniadau with someone to meet up or make trefniadau for Christmas or a holiday.
I thought that Silurian always related to Shropshire, but I know there are rocks in the area that we’re formed in the Silurian geological period, so that could be my mistake
Several geological periods and terms have been adopted like that from names of celtic tribes and the like - silurian, cambrian, ordovician. The silurians probably stretched up to Shroshire as well?