The Sounds of Welsh and Welsh Ve

The Sounds of Welsh and Welsh Verse Forms

The ordered sounds of Welsh verse comprise a verbal music to which every element of the language contributes: recurring phonemes, as in rhyme and alliteration; the accented syllables of words or phrases, measured into lines of verse; and cadences built from the expressive intonation of sentences. Verse patterns that developed in the middle ages, with origins in an antiquity beyond written record, are still employed by Welsh poets writing for an audience able to enjoy their intricate versification. English speakers can taste the joys of Old English alliterative verse only at school. The enriching changes wrought upon English versification through the assimilation of continental and classical forms, the invention of new forms, and the profound changes time has brought to English pronunciation, syntax, and vocabulary have distanced modern English readers from their poetic past. Welsh speakers, on the other hand, can hear a medieval poem, recognize its language, and appreciate its harmonies of sound directly, however much they, too, must struggle fully to grasp poetic meaning, allusion, and imagery. Historians of the Welsh language note that the patterns of sound built into the traditional forms of Welsh verse have contributed to preserving the sounds of the language.

The Welsh alphabet is more phonetic, more closely keyed to the actual sounds of the language, than is modern English. There are regional and local variations, particularly in the pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs, and the pronunciation of consonants may vary with the position of a consonant, whether at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. As words are built into phrases and sentences, there are variations in stress that can change the length of vowels. Changes in aspiration are signaled by changes in spelling, but not to cover every case. But despite variations, the standard Welsh alphabet can be related to standard speech sounds with a consistency matching that of Italian, unlike the inconsistencies of English orthography.

The following table presents the letters of the Welsh alphabet and the sounds they represent, using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet as described in Phonetic Symbol Guide by Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Ladusaw (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986). There is only one Welsh sound that is not found in English, the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, the sound at the beginning of the name Llywelyn. Where illustration seems needed in this table, sample words are given in Welsh and English (including some non-English words that have been assimilated into English).

This table of correspondences between alphabet and speech-sounds is far from a complete inventory of the sounds of Welsh. It is instead a narrow selection, limited to sounds that an English speaker needs to know in order to pronounce Welsh words with rudimentary literacy. The result would sound bookish and wooden to a native speaker capable of uttering naturally not only individual words, but phrases, with all their elisions, and shaping these into the lilt of intelligible sentences. Furthermore, a Welsh speaker would articulate the sounds with local variations and a personal expressiveness not comprehended in this brief list.

A guide used in preparing the list is the article by Glyn E. Jones, "The Distinctive Vowels and Consonants of Welsh," in Martin J. Ball and Glyn E. Jones, eds., Welsh Phonology (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1984), 40-64. In that article, the basis of the descriptions given is the Welsh spoken in the Llanwrtyd area of south Powys in mid Wales, a variety of southern Welsh, though the author includes references to northern varieties of Welsh. In my table, accordingly, the vowels are presented as in southern Welsh, not northern. I have not sought to distinguish the many variations in voicing and aspiration that affect the pronunciation of consonants, especially in southern Welsh, a topic treated in some detail in Glyn Jones's article.

I have also consulted the full discussion of Welsh orthography and pronunciation given in Bruce Griffiths and Dafydd Glyn Jones, The Welsh Academy English-Welsh Dictionary (Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1995). Here, too, symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet are employed as a standard guide to pronunciation. The accent in Welsh normally falls on the penultimate syllable. Monosyllables are stressed as their meaning and use in a sentence warrants. Words of foreign origin, notably English words, may retain their original accentuation. Welsh words ending in syllables compounded of more than one vowel may accent the final syllable. The circumflex is used in Welsh orthography to distinguish a long vowel.

a [a] a cappella

b [b]

c [k]

ch [x] loch

d [d]

dd [ð] this

e de [e] étude

e pren [e ] pen

f [v]

ff [f] fun

g [g]

ng [õ ] thing

ngh []

h [h]

i iach [j] year

i ci [i] machine

i dim [w ] trim

l [l]

ll [| ] Belted L: Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative

m [m]

mh []

n [n]

nh []

o ffo [o] beau

o llong [] ] on

p [p]

ph [f] phone

r [r]

rh []

s [s]

si [• ] show

t [t]

th [› ] thin

u du [i] machine

u pump [w ] trim

w gwen [w] win

w gë r [u] food

w pwnc [ ] cook

y tí [i] machine

y bryn [w ] in

y yn [c ] about

ai [ai]

ae [ai]

au [ai]

aw [au]

ei [c i]

eu [c i]

ey [c i]

ew [e u]

iw [w u]

oe [oi]

oi [] i]

ow [ou]

uw [w u]

wy [ i]

yw [w u]

In assembling this table of pronunciations, I have received assistance from Dr. Mari C. Jones, of Peterhouse, Cambridge. She has directed me to authoritative sources such as Welsh Phonology, and has corrected drafts of my transcriptions. Her view of the language is wider and more scientific than I can strive for, and she is not responsible for errors and omissions in my simplified presentations. But she has enabled me to achieve something of what Helge Kökeritz offers in his classic work, A Guide to Chaucer's Pronunciation (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962; now reissued as a Medieval Academy Reprint, published by the University of Toronto Press). Professor Kökeritz gives several passages of Chaucer's Middle English verse in phonetic transcription. Though a reader must learn the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet to use the transcriptions, that toil is rewarded by surer access to the sounds than through grappling with variant spellings.

The features of versification illustrated in these poems belong to three traditional Welsh verse forms, the englyn [e õ lw n], the awdl [audl], and the cywydd [kc ww ð].

The englyn is a short form of great antiquity in Welsh literature. Two varieties are used by Guto'r Glyn. First, englyn proest, usually consisting of four seven-syllable lines, each with the Welsh consonance known as cynghanedd [kc õ hane ð], and with the half-rhyme called proest, that is, lines ending with the same consonant but with differing vowels of the same length. Second, englyn unodl union, a monorhyme stanza of four lines, ten syllables in the first line, six in the second, and seven in each of the last two lines, these comprising a couplet like that of the cywydd. The rhyme in the first line occurs before the end of the line; alliteration links the end of that line with the beginning of the second line. The two concluding lines regularly have cynghanedd.

The awdl is a long poem of varied meters, which can include the varieties of englyn described above.

The cywydd (plural, cywyddau) is the most popular form used by Welsh poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It consists of rhyming couplets of seven-syllable lines, the rhyme alternating on stressed and unstressed syllables. In the poems of Guto'r Glyn, each line has cynghanedd. His cywyddau are of varying length, usually from 50 to 70 lines.

The elements of which cynghanedd is composed are internal rhyme, alliteration, and stress. The general principal is that accented words in a line of verse are heightened and linked by rhyme or alliteration, or a combination of these. The effect is to give the line explosive energy, as well as balance. Cynghanedd lusg ("trailing") has only rhyme, the accented penultimate syllable (that is, the second-to-last syllable) of the line rhyming with a word, accented or unaccented, earlier in the line. Cynghanedd sain ("sound") combines rhyme and alliteration: a word early in the line rhymes with a later word; that later word alliterates with the word ending the line. This pattern, cynghanedd sain, was the one most used by fourteenth-century poets, but is less common in the poems of Guto'r Glyn. Cynghanedd groes ("cross") repeats a sequence of consonants from the first half of the line in the second half of the line. Cynghanedd groes o gyswllt ("cross by linkage") begins the matching second sequence of consonants before the caesura that divides the line. Cynghanedd draws ("across") has other consonants separating the consonants that are matched at the beginning and end of the line.

The following passage from a poem by Guto'r Glyn illustrates these patterns. First I give the Welsh text and my translation, then I repeat each Welsh line separately with highlighting of its elements of cynghanedd. The lines are from Poem 43, Gwaith Guto= r Glyn, lines 7-12, written in praise of Hywel ab Ifan Fychan of Moeliwrch:

Ni all dy galon ballu,

Natur Ifan Fychan fu.

Dy swydd o fewn dy syddyn,

A Duw a'i tâl, da wyt ynn,

Rhoi rhoddion, rhyw yr hyddod,

Rhaid yw i glêr hau dy glod.

(Your heart can= t fail, it was of Ifan Fychan's nature. Your function in your house, and God will repay it, you're good to us, is giving gifts, impulse of the stags, the touring poets are obliged to sow your praise.)

Cynghanedd lusg: Ni all dy galon ballu,

Cynghanedd sain: Natur Ifan Fychan fu.

Cynghanedd draws: Dy swydd o fewn dy syddyn,

Cynghanedd groes: A Duw a'i tâl, da wyt ynn,

Cynghanedd groes: Rhoi rhoddion, rhyw yr hyddod,

Cynghanedd groes o gyswllt: Rhaid yw i glêr hau dy glod.

Accent or stress plays a vital role in cynghanedd. Eurys Rowlands, who introduces his Poems of the Cywyddwyr with a full analysis of the system and contributes a chapter on "Cynghanedd, Metre, Prosody" to A Guide to Welsh Literature (vol. 2), marks it as a general rule of cynghanedd "that the key-words in the correspondence or harmony are strongly stressed, or metrically emphasized, and are followed by a pause, one pause being a caesura and the other being the end of the line" (GWL 2:205). The above lines illustrate this and show some of the varieties of stress that give rhythmic interest to cynghanedd. The two lines showing the most clearly marked caesura are those with cynghanedd groes. It should be noted that the word at the caesura does not end in a consonant matched at the end of the line; as Eurys Rowlands puts it, "the consonants at the end of the key-words do not correspond, but vary" (GWL 206). It should also be noted that consonants occurring before words beginning with a vowel may be pronounced as if comprising one word, through elision, as in wyt ynn above. The first instance of cynghanedd groes above has a keyword of one syllable at the caesura (tâl), while the second instance has a keyword of two syllables in that position (rhoddion). Speaking the lines aloud, distinctly yet coherently, permits one to hear both the strong repetitions and the variations in consonance and rhythm.

"In the beginning," write James I. Wimsatt and Thomas Cable in their introduction to The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1991), "poetry and music formed one art: Homer was sung, Beowulf was sung, the Provençal lyric was sung" (p. 1). In Welsh, one word, cerdd, can designate music of various sorts. Cerdd dant ("music of a string") means "instrumental music"; cerdd dafod ("music of a tongue") means "song" or "poetry." A medieval Welsh formula for signing a poem was the poet's name followed by the words, a'i cant, meaning "N. sang it." It is not known what instrumental music the poets used in performing their verse, or whether their poems were sung to musical settings, as in the modern style. But it is known, from the testimony of their own poetry, that the poets accompanied the recitation of their poems by playing on a stringed instrument. For example, Dafydd ap Gwilym proclaims his resolve to keep singing love songs, as the girls desire, in these ironic lines, alluding to a performance accompanied by the harp: "When everyone's as pleased/ to hear a paternoster with the harp/ as Gwynedd girls are pleased/ to hear a cywydd of wantonness,/ I'll sing, by my hand,/ the paternoster forever without stopping" (MWP 4.81-6). In the still flourishing Welsh folk tradition known as penillion ("stanzas"), a harpist plays one tune while singing words to another tune, in vigorous counterpoint. Modern composers have written works in this style for the cywydd, and it is possible that a continuous tradition connects the style to a mode in which the medieval cywydd was performed.

The instrumental music that accompanied performances of the medieval cywydd may never be recovered, but the verbal music of the poems survives. While sensing the formal patterning of his verse, one can also hear the easy conversational movement of Guto'r Glyn's lines. Saunders Lewis perceived this to be a distinguishing feature of his poems, noting that all of Guto's cywyddau have the flavor of speech, with cynghanedd as a counterpoint and the meter musically controlling the composition. He makes this comment in an essay on Tudur Aled, a poet of the generation following Guto's, who ranked Guto as the best in writing praise poetry (Meistri= r Canrifoedd , edited by R. Geraint Gruffydd, UWP 1973, p. 101).