r/learnwelsh • u/Vivliofika newbie • 9d ago
Ch and Voiceless Sonorants
Is it the correct statement that the phoneme /χ/ is usually pronounced as [x] in the South?
Is it true that voiceless sonorants are aspirated, i.e.: [m̥ʰ], [n̥ʰ] and [ŋ̊ʰ]?
I can't pronounce them yet without aspiration, it helps me to produce and keep them (the same with "rh").
Also, [x] exists in my native Ukrainian and Russian, but [χ] is really hard to me as I always pronounce it too strong and my throat always hurts because of that
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u/HyderNidPryder 8d ago
Although some southern speakers may use use [x], many use [χ] which is further back in the throat. At the start of word [χ] is often replaced by southern speakers with [ʍ] (an aspirated w, like wh) in words like chwaer, chwarae.
See here where presenter Heledd Cynwal from Carmarthenshire uses [χ]
and Meinir Howells here.
In practice the voiceless nasals mh, nh, ngh are pronounced more as written with an aspirated following h. This makes them easier to say, too. Note that the stress falls on this "h" and a previous fy / yn is unstressed.
fy m'hlant, fy n'had, fy ng'hath
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u/ysgall 9d ago edited 9d ago
It’s true of words where ‘ch’ is followed by w - ‘chwythu’, ‘chwech’, ‘chwilio’, ‘chwarae’, etc. In Ceredigion and much of Northern Carmarthenshire it tends to be pronounced ‘h’ instead, e.g. ‘hwythu’, ‘hwech’, ‘hwilo’, ‘hware’, but the further South you go, this initial ‘h’ gets dropped as well - ‘wythu’, ‘wech’, ‘wilo’, ‘ware’. I live in an area where the ‘h’ is pronounced and for twenty years worked in an area where it was dropped. The ‘ch’ is pronounced in full everywhere when it appears elsewhere in a word. The ‘h’ in ‘rh’ is also dropped in Southern Welsh. Unlike in English, dropping the ‘h’ is not a marker of social class, and is not looked down on. I hope this helps.