Welsh pronounciation guide

[Arawn]

Seeing as the Brythonic sub-forum is looking frightfully busy, i figured i'd pitch in with a basic pronounciation guide for this fine language (also AWAR kind of suggested it would be a good idea).

The Alphabet.
The Welsh alphabet has 28 letters, of which 7 are vowels:
A, B, C, Ch, D, Dd, E, F, Ff, G, Ng, H, I, L, Ll, M, N, O, P, Ph, R, Rh S, T, Th, U, W, Y
Yup, those letter pairs are single letters, no, really, they are. It looks wierd and archaic, but the simple explanation is that back around 500 AD when the then Old-Welsh speakers set about adopting the Latin/Roman script to their language and alphabet, they realised that there were alot of letters unaccounted for, so they had to use their imagination and come up with a solution, only i think they got drunk and came up with a solution instead, either way, thats how it is.

Now for the pronounciation guide (i'm copying some stuff from Britannia.com, because i'm lazy, but it should be known that, unsuprisingly, different Welsh people differ on pronounciation, and all are convinced that they and they alone are right).

The vowels - A, E, I, O, U, W, Y

-A as in man, same as in English pretty much
-E as in bet
-I can be both 'i' (as in pin) or 'ee' (as in bee)
-O as in hot
-U always has an 'ee' sound, like in seen
-W is a 'oo' sound, like zoo (literaly a double 'u' for some languages)
-Y can be an 'uh' sound or an 'i' (happy) sound

If a vowel has a '^' (or 'little roof' as it is called), then it is long.
It should be noted that Welsh vowels tend to be 'pure' that is to say, you don't move your mouth to say them, hmm, hope that makes sense.

Those crazy looking Consonants

-C is always hard, as in cool (thus making 'k' obsolete)
-Ch, think of the Scotish word loch
-Dd is the same sound as the (a hard 'th' in other words)
-F is like the English 'v', as in vale
-Ff is like the English 'f' as in fine
-G is always like English go
-Ng as in Gangbang and wang
-Ll, everyone's favourite Welsh letter, an aspirated 'L'. Basicly, make to say an 'L', but blow gently, there, that wasn't so bad, and look, you don't have to wipe your monitor.
-R is a rolling 'r'
-Rh, like above, but aspirated, almost as if there is a slight 'h' before the 'r'
-Th is the softer 'th' as in thin and breathe (Welsh treats the two as different letters)

And thats the basics, theres combination vowels, which look freaky at first, but are fairly straight foreward, but sod them for now.
Anyways, for practice, i borrowed a sentence from Britannia.com

Gwd lwc. Ai hop ddat yw can ryd ddys and ddat yt meiks sens tw yw. Iff yw can ryd ddys, dden yw ar dwing ffaen and wil haf no problems at ol yn lyrnyng awr ffaen Welsh alffabet.

[Awar]

Ddanc yw! Yt's cwl stwfff!