I love the Welsh, but holy shit that's not what those letters are supposed to be for. They and the Irish just made a bunch of shit up when they started to standardize spelling. It makes me understand how Russians feel when Westerners use Cyrillic letters improperly.

[–] grozzle@lemm.ee 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

the letters are "supposed to be" for Latin, a language with only five different vowel sounds.

everyone since has just been making a bunch of shit up.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I get that, and i also understand that English shifted it's vowels compared to similar languages. But aside from French, my American brain can kinda figure out how to pronounce Germanic and Romance languages, whereas languages such as Welsh and Polish seems to have applied completely different rules to the Latin alphabet than everyone else.

[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

at least welsh and polish actually read the letters that we write down, unlike some languages

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago

So, you've got no issues with "g" being sometimes kinda "h", "j" being same kind of "h" always, "h" not being a sound a all, "d" sounding like "th", and "z" sounding like "th" but another "th", not the one for "d". Oh, and "c" sounding either like "k" or like the latter "th"

I know some people that claim that everyone should use Latin alphabet, because you then know what things sound like, but that is the most bullshit take I ever heard. I guess that knowing how to write letters helps, but it looks like every other language pronounces those letters different, and English makes extra effort to pronounce different even the same things

[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Having read your comment I’d like your views on “Wrwgwai” - the South American country of Uruguay.

[–] Serpent@feddit.uk 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's easy. W is a vowel in Welsh. It sounds similar to ö in German and it can be modified as ŵ to elongate the sound such as in the word dŵr which means water.

Wrwgwai or Wcrain (for example) are the natural way to spell those countries using the Welsh alphabet. Its a highly phonetic language believe it or not.

[–] davepleasebehave@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

In English it is literally called 'double u'

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Even tho it's more like a double v. Always struck me as odd.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 3 points 2 months ago

Afaik, comes from Latin that had no "U" and "V" was both vowel and consonant until some point in time.

[–] davepleasebehave@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Bug is supposedly a Welsh origin word that is spelt bwg. and that's the limit of my knowledge

[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I’m Welsh myself. I just wondered how somebody who struggled with Wmffre / Humphrey would do with the whole Wrwgwai thing. Some English speakers get it immediately others get a headache thinking about it.

[–] BaumGeist@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

One last joke played on the colonizers invading them

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Nice.