Mae'n debyg bod Anna eisiau ateb mwy sylfaenol ac hefyd mwy trwyadl. Anna: I'm sure you meant "eu" rather than "ue", didn't you? As a beginner, you can treat all of "ae, ai, au, ei, eu" as being like English "eye". The actual facts are more complicated. First of all, in Wales words like "eye, time, die, wide" sound somewhat different from the way they are said in California. Americans can think of the sound as being like "uh" plus a short "i"-sound. So Welsh "neu" starts like English "nut" but then has a short "i"-sound instead of the "t". Secondly, many Welsh people have two distinct sounds of this type in their English, inasmuch as they pronounce "aye" (as in "aye, aye, sir") differently from "eye". In this case their "aye" will sound more or less identical to General American "eye". Applying this to Welsh, most native speakers of Welsh distinguish between pairs such as "tei" (a man's necktie) and "tai" (houses, plural of ty). The first has the same sound as Welsh English "eye" (or for some people like English English or American English "play"), the second that of Welsh English "aye". For a South Wales pronunciation of Welsh, you get the "aye" sound in most words of one syllable (cae, cau, cai, sain, dau, rhai, llai, faint, rhaid), and words stressed on the last syllable (nesau, Cymraeg). Certain structure words, though, have the "eye" sound (neu, gwneud), as do English borrowings (tei, reit, teils (= tie, right, tiles)). In the non-final syllables of all other words you usually get the "eye" sound, thus "neidio, pleidiol, aelod, goleuni". The plural ending -au is colloquially like -e (or -a). Other list members have already mentioned "ei, ein, eich, eu". In North Wales things are much more complicated, with perhaps four further diphthong sounds involved. (Central vs. open startingpoint; front vs. central endpoint; short vs. long.) For Welsh, see particularly a chapter by Glyn E Jones, 'The distinctive vowels and consonants of Welsh', in Ball MJ and Jones GE, 'Welsh phonology', Cardiff: Univ. of Wales Press, 1984. For Welsh English, see my own 'Accents of English', chapter 5.1, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962. Cymry: yw hynny yn gywir? Sais ydw i, sy wedi dysgu Cymraeg mewn ysgol nos... Prof. J.C. Wells Dept. of Phonetics & Linguistics University College London Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT Tel. +44 (0)71-380 7175 (direct line) Fax +44 (0)71-383 4108