Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 October 28

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October 28

Welsh language

last week i made a journey to Swansea onto Llandovery. my schoolboy memory told me to say the double l as an 'f' which was markedly corrected by the station master as 'l'. the station Swansea was in south Wales about 80 miles south of Llandovery. The town itself had a Welsh spelling i could not pronounce. Is the pronunciation dependent upon region or its Welsh spelling? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Slimeylimey09 (talk • contribs) 17:11, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

The Welsh double l is neither the /f/ sound nor the /l/ sound, so both you and the station master were wrong. It's a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, and an audio file of the sound can be found in that article. Here is a blog entry by phonetician John C. Wells describing how he would teach people to make the sound; it's worth a read. (It occurs to me, however, that the station master was right in a sense: Llandovery is the English name of the town, not the Welsh name – which is Llanymddyfri – and the English name of course uses only sounds found in English, so it begins with the usual English /l/ sound.) +Angr 17:47, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

i half understand that it is an effortless use of my voice to pronounce the 'll' sound and to relate the 'single phonetic segment' is like relating Beethoven or the Beatles to a sheet of music(my analogy). However i am still left with the original query of saying the original spelling of the town without incurring the wrath of the native Welsh —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.234.72 (talk) 19:28, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. 'Llandovery' is an English attempt to approximate the sound of the Welsh name llanymddyfri, but it's not very close to it - in particular it omits a syllable. If you're wanting an indication of how to pronounce the Welsh, it would be /ɬanəm'ðəvri/, or in non-IPA terms 'llan-um-THE-vree' where the 'll' is as described by Angr above, 'um' is like - um - you know, 'the' is just like the English word 'the' when it isn't stressed (i.e. not like 'thee') - though it is the stressed syllable in this Welsh name. If that helps. --ColinFine (talk) 22:38, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems here are two issues. First, the issue whether the 'l' can be a different consonant. In a language analogy, the answer seems, yes; 'l' (a lateral consonant) is usually affected by adjacent vowels (i.e. as a lateral approximants or even for something else). However, a segment of 'l' (double ‘l’) remains as a single phoneme 'l' and is usually a 'clear l' at a word initial (as an alveolar lateral fricative). To the second issue, the answer is again, yes. That is, the sound of “l” can still be varied based on adjacent vowels if the vowels are back vowels (or pronounced as such). In such case, the 'l' is 'dark' (a velarised alveolar lateral fricative). In Welsh, these phenomena seem like the same. Is this correct?--Mihkaw napéw (talk) 03:54, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

that is getting me there, thank you. listening to the sound bite the phonetic segment sounds like'Ahhh' which is similar to the 'l' in belt. the final question is the acceptable use or not of the English of the town llanymddyfri, and whether to use the English pronunciation when talking to the station master. thanks.Slimeylimey09 (talk) 07:07, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Mihkaw napéw's comments, the Welsh 'll', pronounced [ɬ], is certainly a different phoneme from the 'l'. Acoustically, it's clearly a fricative, so much so that speakers of languages that don't have the phoneme always use fricatives or fricative and lateral combinations to approximate it. One should not confuse it with the issue of a velarized (i.e. 'dark') 'l', which has a similar symbol, [ɫ]. Most varieties of English use both 'clear l' and 'dark l' sounds, but they are the same phoneme pronounced in different environments. Welsh 'l' and 'll' are distinct phonemes, where the former corresponds to the sound in English and the latter is non-existent in English and most languages.

By the way, the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists [læn'dʌv(ə)ɹi] as the pronunciation of the English name 'Llandovery', with an optional pronunciation where the [l] is pronounced [ɬ]. Since [ɬ] is not a native phoneme in English, however, this latter advice strikes me as odd, much like pronouncing 'Munich' with a German [ç] or [x] when 'Munich' is itself the English version of 'München' and shouldn't be pronounced with foreign sounds anyway. So my advice is, pronounce the English name 'Llandovery' as in English and the Welsh name 'Llanymddyfri' as in Welsh, to the best of your ability. --Iceager (talk) 08:46, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I imagine a fair proportion of the people who are likely to talk about Llandovery on a daily basis have no difficulty in producing a [ɬ], and are accustomed to doing so in other town names that begin with Llan- where there is no English name distinct from the Welsh name (Llandeilo, Llandudno, Llandysul, Llanelli, Llanfair Caereinion, Llanfairfechan, Llanfyllin, Llangefni, Llangollen, Llanidloes, Llanrwst, Llantrisant, Llanybydder, etc.). I bet for a lot of people in Wales, using [ɬ] in Llandovery seems perfectly normal, even though it isn't the Welsh form of the town's name. +Angr 10:37, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree - use the Welsh pronunciation of "ll" or you'll start upsetting people. Alansplodge (talk) 02:58, 31 October 2009 (UTC)