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Pronouncing Welsh Place Names

Welsh Place Names | Signs in Welsh | Useful Words and Phrases

Wales is a bi-lingual country – both Welsh and English are spoken. You certainly don't need to speak any Welsh to enjoy your visit to Wales. But, just a little understanding of Welsh place names will bring your cycle ride to life, especially as most Welsh place names are largely descriptive. So, if you want to learn a little bit about the Welsh language, here goes...

Apart from a few vowels that are slightly different from English, Welsh is a more or less a phonetic language, you pronounce it as it looks. Don't get put off by the long list of vowels and consonants, once you've understood the few rules it is easy.

It may help you to pronounce names if you remember that the emphasis in Welsh is usually on the penultimate syllable. For example, Caernarfon (kyre-nar-von), Beddgelert (beth-gel-airt), Llanberis (thlan-ber-ris), Felindre (veh-lin-dray).

Welsh has a slightly different alphabet from English – we've listed the differences below:-

C - pronounced as a K, as in English 'kick' eg: Caernarfon (kyre-nar-von).

CH - pronounced as in the Scottish 'loch' and the composer Bach.

DD - pronounced TH, as in English 'breathe' eg: Beddgelert (beth-gell-airt).

G - pronounced as a hard G, as in English 'get' eg: Beddgelert (beth-gell-airt).

LL - roughly pronounced THL eg: Llanberis (thlan-ber-ris)

F - pronounced as a V, as in English 'of' eg: Felindre (veh-lin-dray).

FF - pronounced as an F, as in English 'off' eg: FFestiniog (fest-in-yog).

W - pronounced as an OO, as in English 'swoon' eg: Llanrwst (thlan-roost).

Y - has two different pronunciations. In all but the last syllable of a word it's pronounced as a U - as in English 'fun'. When it is in the last syllable of a word it is pronounced as an i - as in English 'is'. For example, the Welsh for mountain is mynydd (mun-ith); the Welsh for mountains is mynyddoedd (mun-uth-oith).  Because it no longer occurs in the last syllable, the sound of the second y changes from 'i' to 'u' (also, notice the emphasis moves along to the new penultimate syllable). In single syllable words, the Y is unpredictable!

Welsh Place Names:-

Welsh place names are largely descriptive, eg: Mynydd Bach - small mountain (Mynydd = mountain, Bach = small). A famous example of this is:-

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Which roughly translates as:-

The Church of St. Mary by the pool with the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's church and the red cave.

The actual name of the village is Llanfairpwllgwyngyll and is locally abbreviated to Llanfair PG (well wouldn't you). A Victorian publicity stunt landed the villagers with the long name. If you really want to show off by learning how to pronounce it, try this:-

thlann vyre pooth gwinn gith gogg-erra kweern drobbooth lann tuss-ill-yo goggo gauk.

The following list of place name elements might help make your map reading a little easier:

Foot-note: If you think that Welsh is unpronounceable, then think on. In fact English is one of the most unphonetic languages. For instance the English '...ough' can be pronounced 10 different ways:- through, though, thought, tough, cough, borough, bough, hiccough, lough (pronounced 'och' as in loch), and hough ('ock'). The last is fairly archaic, but it does appear in the 1995 Concise Oxford Dictionary.

Apologies to Welsh speakers if we have taken a few liberties with the pronunciations. We have tried to keep it as simple as possible.

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