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2.3. Welsh English
English is the native language of about 80 per cent of the population of
Wales, i.e. about 2.25 million people. Many of these have some competence
in Welsh. The remaining 20 per cent, about 0.5 million or so, are nativespeakers of Welsh and are all bilingual in English.
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English, Australasian, South African and Welsh English 31
Until quite recently, in most areas of Wales, English was a second lan-
guage learnt in school (as was the case in the Highlands of Scotland).Although this is no longer true and a majority of people in Wales are now
native speakers of English, the effect is that Welsh English, at the level of
educated speech and writing, is not much different from that of England,
except phonetically and phonologically. There are, of course, distinctly
Welsh lexical items and grammatical constructions, often due to the influ-
ence of Welsh, but Welsh Standard English cannot be said to be particularly
different from EngEng. Most differences are found at the level of more
localized dialects (see Wells, 1982 and Hughes and Trudgill, 1987).
2.3.1. WEng vowels
The Welsh English vowel system is, with some regional variation, as 11 1Table 2.6 and on the recording.
The principal phonological differences between WEng and RP are the
following:
1. last, dance, etc. tend to have lrel rather than 10 :1 for most WEng speakers,
although 10 :1 is found for many speakers in some words.
2. Unstressed orthographic a tends to be lrel rather than l 'dl, e.g. sofa [so:fa].
3. Unstressed orthographic a tends to be 101 rather than l 'dl, e.g. condemn
/kondern/.
4. There is no contrast between IA I and l 'd/: rubber Ir'db'dl.
Table 2.6. WEng vowels
hi [I ] bid
lei [e] bed
lrel [a] bad, pass, flbove, sote
1 0 1 [:)] pot, obiect (v.)
IA! [ > l ] putt, famous, rgbber
lui [u ] put
1 i : 1 [i:] bee
leil [e:] bake
lail [;~H] buy
I:)il [:)1] boy
lu:! [u:] boot
loul [0:] boat, board
loul [;)0] boutledl [e:] pair
hi [:): ] sort, paw
1 0 : 1 [a:] bard, calm
1 3 : 1 [0:] bird
leil [¥I] bait
i'Jul [\>u] blow
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32 I nte r na tio na l E ng lis h
5. There is, in many varieties, an additional contrast, between le i l and Ir . i /:
mad e Ime id l [me:d]maid /rneid/ [merd]
Words with Ir . i l are typically those spelt with a i or a y.
6. There is, in many varieties, an additional contrast between loul and hul:
nose Inouzi [no:z]
knows In'Juzl [nouz]
7. Many words which have hi in RP have the vowel loul = [0:] in many
WEng varieties. Thus:
so
soar
RP
[seu]
[so:]
WEng
[so:]
[so.]
Note, however, that por t, pa w still have h: 1 in WEng.8. The vowels 11;)1 , IUdl do not occur in many varieties of WEng. Fea r is
I fi :j d l, p oo r is IpU:Wdl . Similarly, fire is /taijo/.
9. Words such as tu ne , mu sic have I t IOn!, /mruzrk,' rather than Itju:n!, /rnju.zrk/.
2.3.2. WEng consonants
1. Educated WEng is not rhotic with a few exceptions in the east and far
south-west of the country; intrusive and linking Ir / do occur; and Ir/ is
often a flapped [r].
2. Voiceless plosives tend to be strongly aspirated, and in word-final posi-
tion are generally released and without glottalization, e.g. pi t [phIth].
3. III is clear [I] in all positions.4. There is a strong tendency for intervocalic consonants to be lengthened
before unstressed syllables:
butter [bot''.»]
money [mon.i]
5. The Welsh consonants [i] and Ixl occur in place-names and loan-words
from Welsh. Ii i is a voiceless, lateral fricative, and Ix l is a voiceless velar
fricative as in Scots loch or German acht, e.g.:
Llanberis Ihnbcrrsl
b ach Ib o:xI (term of endearment)
2.3.3. Non-systemic pronunciation differences1. For some WEng speakers, Ig l is absent in the following two words:
language
longer
WEng
I lrefjwr.d31
Ilofjdl
RP
Ilrefjgwld31
liofjgdl
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English, Australasian, South African and Welsh English 33
2. For some WEng speakers, lui occurs in both of the following words:
WEng
Ikuml
lwei
RP
Ikouml
ltu:el
comb
tooth
2.3.4. WEng grammar
The following features can be observed in the speech of even some edu-
cated WEng speakers but are not usually encountered in written Welsh
English:
1. The use of the universal tag question isn't it?, invariable for main clause
person, tense or auxiliary:
You're going now, isn't it? (=EngEng aren't you?)
They do a lot of work, isn't it? (=EngEng don't they?)
2. The use of will for will be:
Is he ready? No, but he will in a minute.
3. The use of predicate object inversion for emphasis:
Coming home tomorrow he is
He's coming home tomorrow/It's tomorrow he's coming
home
4. The use of negative too:
WEng
EngEng
WEng
EngEng
I can't do that, too
I can't do that, either
5. The use of adjective and adverb reduplication for emphasis:
WEng
EngEng
It was high, high
It was very high
2.3.5. WEng lexis
Surprisingly few Welsh loan-words are used in standard WEng. Common
words include:
/del/
/aisreovod/
a term of endearment
a competitive arts festival (This word
is known to EngEng speakers, who
generally pronounce it laisttOfgd/.)
porridge dish
del
eisteddfod
llymru /tgmri:1
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34 International English
Different WEng usages of English words found in some parts of Wales
include:
delight
rise
tidy
'interest'
'get, buy'
'good, nice'
(e.g. a delight in languages)
(e.g. I'll rise the drinks)
(e.g. a tidy car)
Again, most vocabulary differences are at the level of non-standard or
colloquial usage.