Welsh English
John Edwards has written and spoken entertainingly about a specific form of Welsh English—that found in the south-east area of Wales—as Wenglish. Some people, generally outside Wales, use the same word to refer to any form of English spoken in Wales.
| Table of contents |
|
2 Influence of the Welsh language 3 Regional accents within Wales 4 External link |
Pronunciation
- Main article: phonemic differentiation.
Some of the features of Welsh English are
- Use of {
- Dropping of h in some varieties, making house sound like ouse. See h-dropping.
- Distinction of /w/ and in wine and whine. See Glide cluster reduction.
- Distinction of and in muse and mews, dew and due, blue and blew etc.
- Use of the Welsh ll sound (a voiceless fricative 'l') in Llwyd, llaw etc.
- Distinction of and in meet and meat, see and sea etc.
- yod-dropping is not present after any consonant, thus threw/through, chews/choose, and yew/you are distinct. The first pairs have the diphthong .
- Distinctive pitch differences giving a "sing-song" effect.
- The distinction between horse and hoarse is preserved.
- Overpronunciation of vowels is common in strong valleys accents.
- Distinction of and in rode and road, cole and coal.
- Light rolling of r's
- Distinction of , and in vane, vain and vein.
- Distinction of and in toe and tow, sole and soul etc.
Influence of the Welsh language
As well as straightforward borrowings of words from the Welsh language (cwtsh, picking to rain), grammar from the language has crept into English spoken in Wales. Placing something at the start of a sentence emphasizes it: "furious, she was". Periphrasis and auxiliary verbs are used in spoken Welsh, resulting in the English: "He do go there", "I do do it", particularly in the so-called Wenglish accent.
Regional accents within Wales
There is a very wide range of regional accents within Wales.
South Walian accents can be heard from the actors Richard Burton and (to a lesser extent) Anthony Hopkins, or on recordings of Dylan Thomas. Swansea accents are prominent in the film Twin Town. The singers Shirley Bassey and Charlotte Church, meanwhile, are from Cardiff.
The accents of North Wales are markedly different with "Scouse"-like Liverpool accents in Queensferry and Flint to the very distinctive accent of North West Wales. Here the R is rolled extensively and the vowels are pressed to the back of the throat, especially the letter U which is pronounced as a guttural ee. The accents of some individuals from some of the more rural communities have been likened to German accents by visitors from England.
The accents of mid-Wales, especially North Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, are gentler in nature than either the "valleys" or the Northern welsh accents and are, by repute, one of the more beautiful British accents to listen to.
External link
- Talk Tidy:John Edwards, the inventor/populariser of the term "Wenglish" and his books and CDs on the matter.
- Some thoughts and notes on the English of south Wales : D Parry-Jones, National Library of Wales journal 1974 Winter, volume XVIII/4
