Simple Vowels i.e. single vowels as opposed to clusters of two or three (diphthongs and triphthongs) have a ‘pure’ sound in Welsh. In this respect they are closer to continental vowels than to their English equivalents which have a tendency to ‘diphthongize’.

Welsh vowels are usually sounded with their full value in situations where English vowels are either swallowed or neutral (listen to potel - bottle - in Linguata Welsh: Eating. Items and to Te lemon in Food and Drink. At the Bar or Café. 1 ).

Welsh vowels can be short or long. You will find most of the following vowel sounds conveniently demonstrated in the three Linguata sections on Buying things.

A broad generalisation is that vowels in the many common monosyllabic words are short before consonant clusters, e.g. ffordd (road), bwrdd (table), pump (five, pron. pimp), before (unvoiced) consonants c p t, and before m and ng; long before the voiced consonants g b d f dd and before ch th ff and s. They are also long in open-ended monosyllables such as da (good), tŷ (house) and de (south).

An important group of one-vowel words are short: a (and) e (he, him) i (to) o (from) and y (the).

A : short as in ‘map’ versus long as in ‘tardy’, e.g. map (map) vs tad (father).

E : let/late, e.g. het (hat) vs beth (what).

I : dim/deep, e.g. dim (no) vs mis (month).

O : cot/pole, e.g. cot (coat) vs pob (every). Welsh long ‘o’ lies between ‘coat’ and ‘caught’.

U : similar to i in South Wales. Listen to Buying things. General phrases 1 & 2. There is no English equivalent to the N.Wales u, which is likened to an ‘ee’ produced at the back of the throat, with the tip of the tongue placed against the lower front teeth and its middle section raised towards the roof of the mouth.

W : cook/cool, e.g. cwm (valley) vs cŵn (dogs).

For references and recommended reading see concluding section.