Talk:Welsh English/Archive 1

North west wales accent?

Why is this accent not mentioned? It's clearly distinct from the other 3 accents mentioned. I guess a good example is Glyn Wise of big brother fame, or perhaps Rhys Ifans (not exactly sure where he's from though, but his accent is northwestish). I don't feel qualified to add anything myself. AneurinM (talk) 20:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

While he was born in Haverfordwest, Rhys Ifans was raised in Ruthin and went to school in Mold, so his accent's more north-eastern than north-western, though not Wrexham or Deesideish! -- Arwel (talk) 21:11, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree - still no mention after 2 years. Not only is there the distinctive Bangorau accent contrasting with the inflexive Coffi accent but the distinctive and sometimes almost incomprehensible rural Anglesey accent. I'm no phonetics expert , but there must be a wealth of material here for at least a couple of paragraphs.  Velela  ^{Velela Talk}   13:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Phonetic description of north welsh-english accent

Phrases like

'In North West Wales the accent is less sing-song', 'the vowels pressed to the back of the throat.', 'Consonants are pronounced very clearly'

do not meet the standard of a wikipedia article describing the phonetics of a dialect. It's not at all clear what they might mean in phonetic terms. Could they improved or failing that deleted?

The same applies to the expression "overpronunciation of vowels". What exactly is this? How can a vowel be "overpronounced"? As compared to what? "Overpronounciation" is a specious term used to express distinct, elongated vowels. The opposite would be "clipped" (obscure) vowels that sound mostly like "uh" or ə. In my narrow experience, certain Scottish accents are rich in clipped vowels.

It may not meet the standard but "over-pronounced" is actually a very good description IMHO, I know exactly what they mean. It's like there's a lot of mouth movement required and the individual letters are given more emphasis. As compared to English and Mediterranean languages, it's quite Germanic sounding in a way. Often-times when an English speaker person tries to mimic Welsh pronounciation they sound like a heavily accented Pakistani speaking English.

from this piece on the subject of welsh accents, notably valleys, http://reswin1.isd.glam.ac.uk/rhondda_valleys_english/, the "over-pronounced" description lines up with /p,k,t/ being heavily aspirated due to welsh influence. the lot of information there seems relevant to the article, and hope it can be useful for adding to the article by someone who knows what theyre doing [ala editing]

Wenglish is not all of Welsh English

I'm not convinced by the very first sentence: Welsh English (sometimes known as Wenglish, a term invented in the mid-1980s) is the dialect of English spoken in Wales by Welsh people.

If the term was invented, then I presume the reference is to John Edwards with his Talk Tidy series. And that specifically refers to the south Wales valleys sort of English, not to the rest of Anglo-Welsh accents. Also, I think mid-eighties is wrong: I remember those books from my childhood, which makes them a bit earlier. I think something along the lines of "sometimes known as Wenglish, although this term was originally applied to one particular form of Welsh English" might be more accurate. Telsa 07:45, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

As far as I've heard, 'Wenglish' is Welsh with some English loanwords/substitutions, and is a dialect of Welsh, not English. (This comment was made by 172.200.243.108, 9th October 2005)

Wenglish has been been described as the Welsh language through the medium of English. It's definately an English dialect, but one containing lots of directly translated Welsh grammar and idioms. Standard Welsh already makes heavy use of English loanwords, and is just called "Welsh". First-language Welsh speakers Adult learners tend to a adopt a more purist approach to using "proper" Welsh words, choosing "mwynhau" for "enjoy", where a first-language Welsh speaker would say "enjoy". (And this comment made by Stronimo, 11:04, 28 October 2005 -- noted by Telsa, 20:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC))

I hope people don't mind a slight reformatting and some attributions. I was getting confused. Telsa 20:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Adult learners of Welsh would use 'mwynhau' while most first language speakers such as myself would instead use the term 'joio' derived from the English 'Enjoy', similar to 'drifo' (drive), though this is mainly confined to the Welsh-speaking areas of south Wales. There are conflicting views over what Wenglish actually describes. Personally, I would term it Welsh with a high level of English loanwords and not the South Walles Valleys dialect, which is primarily English with Welsh inflections. Gareth Williams, Cwmtawe Uchaf.

In Cardiff, Wenglish is term used to represent what is known in Welsh as "bratiaith", where Welsh is generally spoken with one or two English substitutions because the speaker doesn't know the Welsh words. It's sort of meant to represent Welsh bastardisation by English influence. Example: "Nhw'n traino cops i fighto'n dirty" would be an extreme example of Wenglish, where the shape of the sentence is that of Welsh, but most of the words are part-English. Another example would be how words like "joio", "drifo" and "fflio" - English words that have been "Welshified"(?) - have entered into common usage in spoken Welsh. Wenglish and Welsh English are DEFINITELY not the same thing. Welsh English is a bastardisation of English. Wenglish is a bastardisation of Welsh. Tomos_ANTIGUA_Tomos 22:49, 29 January 2007

We in Newport (though I don't talk for all Newport-ers) use Wenglish to mean English words with welsh grammar and idioms, isn't it! A bastardisation if you like ... If it was the Welsh version we'd call it bratiath (or at least it would be a Welsh word with Welsh stems), wouldn't we? Franglais is a French word with French stems (Francais-Anglais, a portmanteau I believe its called) and refers to French with a smattering of English. Pbhj (talk) 01:56, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Stuff to do

Clearly I can't remember those books from when I was 10, because I have looked at the publication date on the things now. Ahem. But anyway, there has been masses of silliness going on on this article, with someone practising their tagging abilities so that new templates arrive hourly. I have had a go at improving it, but things still to be done:

• That list of pronunciation: where did it come from? I don't understand IPA too well, but some of it is a bit odd. I would really like a cite. Especially because at least one line of it was added in quietly by one of the IP addresses whose contributions are mostly to add random templates to the article. Assuming good faith, I have left it for now.
• And in that list, there's nothing about one of the most popular stereotypes at all: 's' being 's' always, and never 'z' ('was' ->'wass', 'busy' -> 'bissy').
• Famous actors as examples of accents: careful here because lots of actors suit their voice to the occasion. (CZJ accepting that award in purest Hollywood/Swansea springs to mind.) Examples of specific periods or films or something would help. I have left Under Milk Wood out because I have not listened to it in an age and can't remember useful anything about it.
• English visitors to Wales think they can hear German accents? Eh? Source?
  • Funny you should say that - Eirias High School, Colwyn Bay had a geography teacher (who also taught my father) who was about as welsh as it gets. When he spoke, he sounded more than a little like the german soldiers in old 1950's black and white war films. He once had caue to reprimand the class ****head - I quote him thus: "Do you vont Leintz?". Alumni will know who I mean. Think of the brass-screw fashioned arrowin the floor aligned to point north.
• Dig out the research about "nicest accent to listen to" and "most disliked accents": Generic Welsh (as in what people who think there is only one accent imagine it to be) is definitely an accent that comes in for stick in England. The Geordie article has a note about how Geordie has recently become trendy.
• Need quotes from Fluellen in Shakespeare and from the Twm Sion Cati stories (Llanerch republished them) about p's and b's and stuff. Borrow probably said something about the accent in English too. Could have a little "Welsh English in history" section then, with notes about how the accent was distinct in those periods.
• Lots of the stuff in Hiberno-English and Highland English about the influence of Irish and Gaelic looks really familiar and someone who knows the topic should go through and add the Welsh equivalents here.

Comments? I'm completely unqualified to do any of this (well, I can dig out the quotes), but someone needs to.

Telsa 09:15, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

uvular fricative

Use of /χ/ (the voiceless uvular fricative) in loch, Bach, etc.

Is it really uvular? On Welsh Language, ch is listed as velar. Main Page 07:32, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's velar. --logixoul 08:18, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

North Welsh accents

Did Talfryn Thomas and Nerys Hughes in The District Nurse both have North Welsh accents? I have heard this but cannot say for myself. PatGallacher 16:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Would someone please change, in the main article, the incorrect claim that Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins have southern accents? Both are from north Wales; Hopkins from Ynys Mon...which is anything but south Wales.

Where do you get that idea from? Burton and Hopkins are both from the Port Talbot area... you can't get much more southern than that. -- Arwel (talk) 00:23, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Hopkins parents apparently lived in Caerleon, near Newport. It's mentioned on Paul Flynn MP's website somewhere. Pbhj (talk) 01:29, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

More 'clearly'?

Consonants are pronounced very clearly, including at the end of a word, so "bad" can sound like "batt"

This seems rather dubious to me. I more or less get what 'pronounced clearly' means. But do English people pronounce the consonants of 'bad' any less clearly than the Welsh? Perhaps /t/ is more rarely pronounced as a glottal stop by Welsh people? But even if this is so, I fail to see how this is connected with 'bad' sounding like 'bat'. How is that clearer? If Welsh people tend to devoice final consonants (do they?), then we should say that rather than resorting to such vague concepts as relative clearness. In any case, I've removed it. garik 14:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

In South Wales at least "bad" is often pronounced with emphasis on the last consonant so it is distinct "d"; "ba" as in barn, with "d" as if someone asked you to sound the d in "dump". "bad" elsewhere is pronounced like "add" (from addition) with a "b". But you're probably right to remove it unless international phonetic symbols can be used to show this and specific reference can be made to eg a video/radio programme (not sure what policy on this is at Wikipedia). Pbhj (talk) 01:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Dysgu

The reverse as quoted He learned me to drive v He taught me to drive is never heard in reverse as dysgu translates to both to be taught and to learn. Dwi dysgu cymrag means both I'm learning welsh and I teach welsh, dependant on the person one would know which version of dysgu they were using.Bensnowden 00:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it is a false assumption to say that the Welsh use "learn" differently because of "dysgu". After all, "learn" is used that way in many dialects of English not because of Welsh influence but because "learn" descends from two sepperate English words meaning "to teach" and "to gain knowledge". With the meaning "to teach", it descends from the Old English verb "laeran", and with the meaning "to gain knowledge" it descends from Old English "leornian". "Laeran" is a cognate with German "lehren" and dialectic English "lere" both meaning "to teach". While the meaning "to teach" is presently frowned upon by teachers, it is no less correct by historical standards. So when a Welsh person says "I'll learn you to talk back to your elders!" it is most likely because of conservative English usage rather than a submerged idiomatic borrowing from the Celtic Welsh language.--24.151.184.192 (talk) 01:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

How are these pronounced?

What are the differences in the pronunciation of rude and rood, threw and through, chews and choose, chute and shoot? --Darth Borehd 01:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

"Yod-dropping" usually means that an initial "y" noise is left off a vowel sound. However, in some of the above words, the initial "y" noise is actually an addition unique to some dialects of English and so the neglect of this sound is not truely yod-dropping. For example "rude" from Latin "rudis" was originally pronounced the way it is spelt but later in some dialects it may have come to be pronounced like "feud"; the same goes with chute. On the other hand "chew", from Old English "ceowan", is truer to its history when pronounced like "skew" though it is in some dialects slurred so as to sound like "too", this is yod-dropping. So what the author means is that Welsh dialects of English tend to conserve the difference between words which were originally pronounced with a "yu" sound and those wich were pronounced with an "u" sound. The author's confusion between yod-dropping and yod-addition may arise from the fact that in English the letter name of U is pronounced "yu", this however does not mean that "yu" is the propper pronunciation of the letter. Instead, it is only called "yu" because of yod-addition which commonly occurs in stressed initial "u" sounds.--24.151.184.192 (talk) 01:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I would add to this that the particular pronunciation differences that the author gives as examples are not merely differentiated by the yod (if at all). The author notes that 'through' and 'threw' are differentiated in Welsh English. I would agree that they sometimes are, but not usually by the inclusion of yod. Feel free to try including yod after a thr cluster, and you'll find it difficult: "thryew". The major differentiation between the two words is the vowel termination. Some parts of Wales use a pure vowel for 'through' ("throo"), but use a sort of glide or diphthong for 'threw' ("threw").

While commenting on yod use, I would say that there are certain examples of actual yod-dropping which are a feature of some parts of Wales. Some speakers in the South Wales valleys drop yod where it would usually be included in Standard English: "ewz" rather than "yooz" for 'use' (verb), "ews" rather than "yoos" for 'use' (noun), "pehpendicuhluh" rather than "pehpendicyuhluh" for 'perpendicular', "tewtoriuhl" rather than "tyootoriull" for 'tutorial', etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.193.153.8 (talk) 08:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Citation request

I've added a template requesting more sources; there seems to me to be an awful lot of statements (very likely true, but not currently chaseable) that need some verifiability. Cheers, Lindsay 17:19, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

To be more specific, there are currently five individual citation requests, which have been there for siven months or so, in two paragraphs. There is one reference only, to a BBC survey, with regard only to the perception of Welsh accents and employment likelihood. Sentences such as this, [i]n particular, Scouse and Brummie accents have both had extensive Anglo-Welsh input through immigration, although in the former case, the influence of Anglo-Irish is better known clearly need something to back them up. Cheers, Lindsay 17:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

History

A history section would be nice. Like...the phases of when the English language truly started to take root in Wales. Its original inluences too, etc. This article touches on none of that. - Gilgamesh (talk) 01:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Cardiff

As Ryan Giggs has a Mancunian accent is he really relevant to this article? 82.5.208.124 (talk) 23:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation and peculiarities

In this section we're told that "in Welsh English, the vowel sounds in "bus" and "the" are identical." Isn't that true of most English dialects? Don't most English speakers pronounce t-h-e as "thuh"? (I assume the sentence doesn't mean the other pronunciation of t-h-e as "thee"). Perhaps a clearer example could be found. Exploding Boy (talk) 16:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I had a chat with my friend from Yorkshire about this and he pronounces bus with a much more closed vowel, like in put, so I'd say no. Welshleprechaun (talk) 23:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

No to which part of my post? Although many people pronounce the "u" in bus more like the "u" in put, that just underscores the problem with this example: not everyone pronounces "bus" the same way. Also, I don't think it's particularly common to pronounce the "e" in the like the "u" in put, so the actual pronunciation in the example is still unclear. Exploding Boy (talk) 00:55, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Regional accents within Wales section

The section on regional accents within Wales is just rubbish. Most of it is OR at best. There's one source in the whole section. It also attracts editors who want to describe the accent of their own areas impressionistically. So I'm moving it here and suggest that we put it back once we've managed to turn it into something encyclopedic, with sources. garik (talk) 22:28, 4 November 2010 (UTC)