Karero wrote:I've just come back from holiday in Wales, and have some weird things to tell from this.
The first is something which I heard twice: once from a lady who definitely wasn't a native keeper and again from a bookshop-keeper who I'm pretty sure was. They described Welsh as a "very phonetic language". Of course Welsh, and indeed most language, can be described as "phonetic": it uses sound as a medium of communication, though why that would be modifiable by "very" is anyone's guess. But of course they don't mean that; what they mean is that the orthography is relatively representational, that is, it efficiently represents that sounds of the language.
a 'bookshop-keeper'? Yeah 'phonetic' has entered the vocabulary of basically everyone in Wales thanks to constant claims that Welsh has a 'phonetic alphabet' or is a 'phonetic language' in the sense that it is spelt as it sounds. This is actually nonsense - the only sense in which it is true is that there is an increasingly common 'standard' taught in textbooks and schools (even Welsh-medium schools if they're in areas which aren't very Welsh-speaking) which is based on spelling pronunciations. It's still markedly better than English, though.
I also found this in a book called "Speak Welsh", a phrasebook with a basic grammar on the front, purchasable from newsagents and bookshops in Wales, which I presume was written by a native speaker: "Welsh has more vowels than English." cf. the many literate English speakers who don't realise that English does not have five vowels.
well, in terms of 'letters that represent vowels' - which is definitely a meaning of 'vowels' - this is true. It's kind of annoying when people get snobby about other people misusing technical terms in a way that is actually just their common signification (I have an acquaintance who calls himself an anarchist and makes a habit of writing posts on Facebook where he dramatically eyerolls at people using the term 'anarchy' negatively even though this is the word's normal and etymological sense). That said, of course, this can lead to conceptual confusion in this sort of context.
Incidentally, I think Welsh probably does have more pure vowel phonemes than many English varieties - /a e i o u A E I O U 1 1: @/ (13) is probably the maximal number, although most of the tense/lax long/short quality-ish distinctions between e.g. /i I/ are largely environment-conditioned. We often get people making quite worn-out jokes about Welsh having no vowels (because of words with w and y).
I have also found this in a BBC Learn Welsh grammar guide: "There are no diphthongs as in English; that is, two vowels used to produce one sound (as in friend, cheat, pour, coot)." Here the problem is a confusion between "diphthong" and "digraph": both Welsh and English have diphthongs, but the English examples referred to actually consist of digraphs, which Welsh doesn't have.
Yeah - again, though, 'diphthong' is regularly used to mean 'two vowels put together'. In phonetics teaching manuals for primary schools you will find the same usage of diphthong = digraph.
