Welsh English

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Welsh English
Native toUnited Kingdom
RegionWales
Native speakers
(undated figure of 2.5 million[citation needed])
Early forms
Latin (English alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3
GlottologNone
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Welsh English (

Cardiff dialect, the South Wales Valleys and West Wales
.

Accents and dialects in the west of Wales have been more heavily influenced by the Welsh language while dialects in the east have been influenced more by dialects in England.[1] In the east and south east, it has been influenced by West Country and West Midland dialects[2] while in north east Wales and parts of the North Wales coast, it has been influenced by Merseyside English.

A colloquial

portmanteau word for Welsh English is Wenglish. It has been in use since 1985.[3]

Pronunciation

Vowels

Short monophthongs

Long monophthongs

Monophthongs of Welsh English as they are pronounced in Abercrave, from Coupland & Thomas (1990), pp. 135–136.
Monophthongs of Welsh English as they are pronounced in Cardiff, from Coupland & Thomas (1990), pp. 93–95. Depending on the speaker, the long /ɛː/ may be of the same height as the short /ɛ/.[12]
Diphthongs of Welsh English as they are pronounced in Abercrave, from Coupland & Thomas (1990), pp. 135–136
Diphthongs of Welsh English as they are pronounced in Cardiff, from Coupland & Thomas (1990), p. 97

Diphthongs

  • Fronting diphthongs tend to resemble Received Pronunciation, apart from the vowel of bite that has a more centralised onset [æ̈ɪ][16]
  • Backing diphthongs are more varied:[16]
    • The vowel of low in RP, other than being rendered as a monophthong, like described above, is often pronounced as [oʊ̝]
    • The word town is pronounced with a near-open central onset [ɐʊ̝]
  • Welsh English is one of few dialects where the Late Middle English diphthong /iu̯/ never
    yod-dropping
    never occurs: distinctions are made between choose /t͡ʃuːz/ and chews /t͡ʃɪʊ̯s/, through /θruː/ and threw /θrɪʊ̯/, which most other English varieties do not have.

Consonants

Distinctive vocabulary and grammar

Aside from lexical borrowings from Welsh like bach (little, wee), eisteddfod, nain and taid (grandmother and grandfather respectively), there exist distinctive grammatical conventions in vernacular Welsh English. Examples of this include the use by some speakers of the tag question isn't it? regardless of the form of the preceding statement and the placement of the subject and the verb after the predicate for emphasis, e.g. Fed up, I am or Running on Friday, he is.[22]

In South Wales the word where may often be expanded to where to, as in the question, "Where to is your Mam?". The word butty (Welsh: byti) is used to mean "friend" or "mate".[25]

There is no standard variety of English that is specific to Wales, but such features are readily recognised by Anglophones from the rest of the UK as being from Wales, including the phrase look you which is a translation of a Welsh language tag.[22]

The word tidy is among "the most over-worked Wenglish words". It carries a number of meanings include - great or excellent, or a large quantity. A tidy swill is a wash that includes, at the least, the hands and the face.[26]

Code-switching

As Wales has become increasingly more anglicised, code-switching has become increasingly more common.[27][28]

Examples

Welsh code-switchers fall typically into one of three categories: the first category is people whose first language is Welsh and are not the most comfortable with English, the second is the inverse, English as a first language and a lack of confidence with Welsh, and the third consists of people whose first language could be either and display competence in both languages.[29]

Welsh and English share congruence, meaning that there is enough overlap in their structure to make them compatible for code-switching. In studies of Welsh English code-switching, Welsh frequently acts as the matrix language with English words or phrases mixed in. A typical example of this usage would look like dw i’n love-io soaps, which translates to "I love soaps".[28]

In a study conducted by Margaret Deuchar in 2005 on Welsh-English code-switching, 90 per cent of tested sentences were found to be congruent with the Matrix Language Format, or MLF, classifying Welsh English as a classic case of code-switching.[28] This case is identifiable as the matrix language was identifiable, the majority of clauses in a sentence that uses code-switching must be identifiable and distinct, and the sentence takes the structure of the matrix language in respect to things such as subject verb order and modifiers.[27]

History of the English language in Wales

The presence of English in Wales intensified on the passing of the

closure of the monasteries
, which closed down many centres of Welsh education, led to decline in the use of the Welsh language.

The decline of Welsh and the ascendancy of English was intensified further during the Industrial Revolution, when many Welsh speakers moved to England to find work and the recently developed mining and smelting industries came to be manned by Anglophones. David Crystal, who grew up in Holyhead, claims that the continuing dominance of English in Wales is little different from its spread elsewhere in the world.[30] The decline in the use of the Welsh language is also associated with the preference in the communities for English to be used in schools and to discourage everyday use of the Welsh language in them, including by the use of the Welsh Not in some schools in the 18th and 19th centuries.[31]

Influence outside Wales

While other British English accents from England have affected the accents of English in Wales, especially in the east of the country, influence has moved in both directions.

Brummie (colloquial) accents have both had extensive Anglo-Welsh input through migration, although in the former case, the influence of Irish-English
is better known.

Literature

Dylan Thomas' writing shed at the Boathouse, Laugharne

"Anglo-Welsh literature" and "Welsh writing in English" are terms used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers. It has been recognised as a distinctive entity only since the 20th century.[32] The need for a separate identity for this kind of writing arose because of the parallel development of modern Welsh-language literature; as such it is perhaps the youngest branch of English-language literature in the British Isles.

While Raymond Garlick discovered sixty-nine Welsh men and women who wrote in English prior to the twentieth century,[32] Dafydd Johnston believes it is "debatable whether such writers belong to a recognisable Anglo-Welsh literature, as opposed to English literature in general".[33] Well into the 19th century English was spoken by relatively few in Wales, and prior to the early 20th century there are only three major Welsh-born writers who wrote in the English language: George Herbert (1593–1633) from Montgomeryshire, Henry Vaughan (1622–1695) from Brecknockshire, and John Dyer (1699–1757) from Carmarthenshire.

Welsh writing in English might be said to begin with the 15th-century bard

Oxford in England in about 1470 and uses a Welsh poetic form, the awdl, and Welsh orthography
; for example:

O mighti ladi, owr leding - tw haf
At hefn owr abeiding:
Yntw ddy ffast eferlasting
I set a braents ws tw bring.

A rival claim for the first Welsh writer to use English creatively is made for the diplomat, soldier and poet John Clanvowe (1341–1391).[citation needed]

The influence of Welsh English can be seen in the 1915 short story collection

My People by Caradoc Evans, which uses it in dialogue (but not narrative); Under Milk Wood (1954) by Dylan Thomas, originally a radio play; and Niall Griffiths
whose gritty realist pieces are mostly written in Welsh English.

See also

Other English dialects heavily influenced by Celtic languages

References

  1. ^ a b Rhodri Clark (27 March 2007). "Revealed: the wide range of Welsh accents". Wales Online. Wales Online. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
  2. ^ a b "Secret behind our Welsh accents discovered". Wales Online. Wales Online. 7 June 2006. Retrieved 31 January 2010.
  3. .
  4. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 380, 384–385.
  5. ^ Connolly (1990), pp. 122, 125.
  6. ^
    ISBN 9781853590313. Retrieved 22 February 2015.[page needed
    ]
  7. ^ a b c Wells (1982), pp. 384, 387, 390
  8. ^ . Retrieved 22 February 2015.
  9. ISBN 9781853590313. Retrieved 22 February 2015.[page needed
    ]
  10. ^ Wells (1982), pp. 380–381.
  11. ^ Trudgill, Peter (27 April 2019). "Wales's very own little England". The New European. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  12. ^ Coupland & Thomas (1990), p. 95.
  13. ^ Wells (1982), p. 387.
  14. ISBN 9781853590313. Retrieved 22 February 2015.[page needed
    ]
  15. ISBN 9781853590313. Retrieved 22 February 2015.[page needed
    ]
  16. ^
    ISBN 9781853590313. Retrieved 22 February 2015.[page needed
    ]
  17. ISBN 9781853590313. Retrieved 22 February 2015.[page needed
    ]
  18. . Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  19. ^
    ISBN 9781853590313. Retrieved 22 February 2015.[page needed
    ]
  20. ^ Coupland (1988), p. 29.
  21. .
  22. ^ a b c d e f Crystal (2003), p. 335.
  23. . Retrieved 31 January 2019.
  24. ^ Wells (1982), p. 390.
  25. ^ "Why butty rarely leaves Wales". Wales Online. 2 October 2006 [updated: 30 Mar 2013]. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
  26. .
  27. ^ .
  28. ^ .
  29. .
  30. ^ Crystal (2003), p. 334.
  31. ^ "Welsh and 19th century education". BBC. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  32. ^ a b Garlick (1970).
  33. ^ Johnston (1994), p. 91.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links