ɨ/), with ystyr ‘meaning’ /ˈǝstɨr/ and llythyr ‘letters’ /ˈɬǝθɨr/ given as examples. 1330 in NLW Peniarth MS 20, which is the first manuscript to state, in its Bardic Grammar, that the letter y has two pronunciations, ‘dark’ (i.e. The modern choice,, was already in use c. It was discovered in the Middle Ages that the three vowels /i ɨ ǝ/ could be efficiently represented by only two symbols, and, provided that /ɨ/ and /ǝ/ were the pair chosen to share a symbol. 5 Occasional attempts to differentiate the two values of, by writing y with two different shapes of tail, were therefore regarded as superfluous, even in their own day (Huws 2004 cf. cynt /kɨnt/ ‘sooner’ versus y /ǝ/ ‘the’, while in polysyllables normally means /ɨ/ in the unstressed final syllable and /ǝ/ in all other syllables, as in mynydd /ˈmǝnɨð/. Yet the current system, first glimpsed in Braint Teilo (‘The Privilege of St Teilo’) in the twelfth century (subsection 3.3 below), works well since the value of is predictable: normally means /ɨ(:)/ in stressed monosyllables and /ǝ/ in unstressed ones, e.g. This exception looks problematic, and is certainly a stumbling-block for beginners, since it represents both /ǝ/ and /ɨ/, as, for example, in mynydd /ˈmǝnɨð/ ‘mountain’. The spelling of the standard literary language is often described as ‘phonetic’, with the exception of the letter (Morris-Jones 1913: 11. Therefore medieval Welsh trist ‘sad’ and hynn ‘these’ had predictably short vowels and mis ‘month’ and hyn ‘older’ had predictably long ones (assuming nn and n were distinguished in writing). before consonant clusters) and old short vowels were lengthened in others (e.g. Under the New Quantity System old long vowels were shortened in certain types of syllables (e.g. Whereas Irish and Scottish Gaelic have to make extensive use of diacritics to mark length, 3 this is less necessary in Welsh on account of the ‘New Quantity System’ (common to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, and usually dated c. After various experiments, including differentiating ỽ and v (two forms of the letter v), the language has finally settled on for the historic 2 /a e i ɨ o u ʉ/, with a sporadic use of the circumflex for vowels that are not predictably long. The five- or, with y, 1 six-vowel system of Latin has presented even more of a challenge than the consonants, as for most of its life Welsh has needed to represent /a e i ɨ o u ʉ/, both long and short – and also schwa /ǝ/, which lies somewhat outside the quantity system (Iosad 2017b: 323). Sims-Williams 1992), the desire for one symbol per sound conflicted with a conservative resistance to the invention of new letters. In handwriting, some people still prefer δ to dd, which was already condemned as cumbrous and un-Classical in the first book printed in Welsh (Prise 1546). For example, for the dental series /t d θ ð/ it now uses, but for /ð/ only started to be used in the thirteenth century (Charles-Edwards & Russell 1994 Russell 1993 1995 1999 2009 Charles-Edwards 2016), and for many centuries for /ð/ competed with the obviously ambiguous and, and sometimes with, over- or under-dotted, or even, a digraph lacking sanction from Latin usage, or with special symbols such as (see Conclusion),, and. Like many languages, Welsh has struggled with a shortage of letters in the Roman alphabet. For this the ultimately abortive ‘Caligula’ system ( c. This article argues that one reason, apart from scribal conservatism, for the delay in adopting the ‘Teilo’ system was its failure to distinguish the value of in proclitics such y /ǝ/ ‘the’ and y /ɨ/ ‘his/her’ and ‘to’. 1300 instead all three phonemes might be represented by, as commonly before 1100, or by or might be used for /ǝ/ and/or for /ɨ(:)/, as had sometimes occurred in Old Welsh as well. Yet the ‘Teilo’ system is rarely attested before c. At that time the three-way system of for /i(:)/, ‘dark’, and ‘clear’ was two centuries old, being first attested in Braint Teilo (‘The Privilege of St Teilo’), c. 1330, when a grammarian labelled /ǝ/ and /ɨ/ as ‘dark y’ and ‘clear y’ and illustrated them with polysyllables such as ystyr /ˈǝstɨr/ ‘meaning’, in which the value of was predictable from the position of in the word. This double use of was almost universally adopted by c. A famous exception to the ‘phonetic spelling system’ of Welsh is the use of for both /ǝ/ and the retracted high vowel /ɨ(:)/.
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