CH – pronounced as in the Scottish ‘loch’ and the composer Bach. DD – pronounced TH, as in English ‘breathe’ eg: Beddgelert (beth-gell-airt). G – pronounced as a hard G, as in English ‘get’ eg: Beddgelert (beth-gell-airt). LL – roughly pronounced THL eg: Llanberis (thlan-ber-ris).

Cwtch, which has long been a familiar word in the Welsh language, was given two definitions: noun (Welsh) 1. a cupboard or cubbyhole. 2. a cuddle or hug.

The name Pontypridd derives from the name Pont-y-tŷ-pridd, Welsh for ‘bridge by the earthen house’, a reference to a succession of wooden bridges that formerly spanned the River Taff at this point.

Thankfully the pronunciation of LL is very straightforward! First, place the tip of your tongue along the gum line behind your front teeth as if you were about to pronounce the letter L. Then, while keeping your tongue firmly in place, blow a constant stream of air out of the two sides of your mouth.

The disuse of this letter is at least partly due to the publication of William Salesbury’s Welsh New Testament and William Morgan’s Welsh Bible, whose English printers, with type letter frequencies set for English and Latin, did not have enough k letters in their type cases to spell every /k/ sound as k, so the order …

The flag incorporates the red dragon of Cadwaladr, King of Gwynedd, along with the Tudor colours of green and white. The red dragon was then included as a supporter of the Tudor royal arms to signify their Welsh descent. It was officially recognised as the Welsh national flag in 1959.

Welsh Alphabet – Vowels There are seven vowels in Welsh, a, e, i, o, u, w, and y. The letter y can be a vowel but also a consonant.

Q: Why is the letter W called “double u”? It looks like a “double v” to me. A: The name of the 23rd letter of the English alphabet is “double u” because it was originally written that way in Anglo-Saxon times. At first, the sound was represented by “uu”—literally a double “u.”

Eunoia

RHYTHMS

Words with no vowels Cwm and crwth do not contain the letters a, e, i, o, u, or y, the usual vowels (that is, the usual symbols that stand for vowel sounds) in English. But in those words the letter w simply serves instead, standing for the same sound that oo stands for in the words boom and booth.

There are very few lexical words (that is, not counting interjections) without vowel letters. The longest such lexical word is tsktsks, pronounced /ˌtɪskˈtɪsks/. The mathematical expression nth /ˈɛnθ/, as in delighted to the nth degree, is in fairly common usage.