Nigel Love writes... > > > From: John Lewis > > Subject: New learner > > > I'm just now getting into studying Welsh. Unfortunately most of the > > materials I've found focus on spoken Welsh; this isn't bad, its just that I > > would like to learn to read it as well. Among the learning materials there > > seems to be a lot of inconsistency regarding spelling. Is this inconsistency > > reflected in modern written Welsh? > > Yes, it is. Because the sound - spelling correspondences are pretty > systematic and regular, there's a strong tendency to spell as you > speak. I.e. colloquial forms of the spoken language have their own > written form, which are quite different from the literary standard. > (It's a bit as though in English we could write things like "gonna", > "hafta" ad lib, without prior notice, so to speak -- I know some > English speakers do sometimes write like that, but it's strange > and special in a way that the equivalent isn't in Welsh.) It depends entirely on what sort of written Welsh it is; just like in any other language, if a writer intends to record the 'sound' of a speakers' words, he/she will use spelling which which accomplish this. Hence, Kate Roberts has most of her characters speaking in an incomprehensible Gwyndodeg, and Daniel Owen's characters can be a bit hard to understand at first (although it helps a lot if you're from the North East to start with...). The German landlord in Mihangel Morgan's "Dirgel Ddyn" is quite funny, as when he speaks Welsh all the 'w's become 'f's (think about it..). In all of the above, however, the 'narrative' sections, between the dialogues, are in completely standard Welsh; as are newspapers, magazines, official documents and anything else where you might encounter written Welsh. In these cases there is no variation in the spelling. (Note, however, that older documents sometimes have words differently spelled. I've recently bought myself a new copy of the 'old' translation of the Welsh Bible, which has a copy of Peter Williams' concordance in the back. The Bible text itself is spelled conventionally, but the text in the concordance still uses the spelling that was common in the last century and before - 'gorphwyssfa' instead of 'gorffwysfa' etc.) Steve Morris, Dept. Physics and Astronomy, UWC Cardiff. S.Morris@astro.cardiff.ac.uk