welsh english

8/2/2019 Welsh English

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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.



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



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



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



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.

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