It’s been a while since my last language test drive. This time, we look at Welsh, which is another Celtic language. It’s spoken by only about 20% of the Welsh population, or 562,000 people. I’ve been interested in this language because of its long words and many things I have no idea how to pronounce.
Jay Dee dw i.
— I’m Jay Dee.
Alphabet
This isn’t very difficult. It uses the Roman/Latin alphabet, so it’s familiar. There are some letters with accents, but I haven’t actually used any yet.
Pronunciation
This is kind of difficult. Many of the vowel sounds are different, and there are additional vowels, ‘w’ and ‘y.’ Some of the consonant sounds are a bit different from what I’ve heard, but nothing difficult.
Grammar
I can’t say much about this, as there hasn’t been much in the way of grammar in the course, yet. Just greetings, really. But I suspect that it may be similar to Irish, but I really don’t know. Checking Wikipedia confirms that it is verb-subject-object, like Irish.
Overall Impression
I had an easier time remembering words in Welsh than in Irish. There were some similarities to English, which made it easier. The days of the week had some similarities to the English names of the planets, so I didn’t have any issues there. The things that’s most difficult is the spelling and pronunciation, at least for now. I think it’s going to be an interesting language to learn. At least I’ll know how to pronounce all those difficult town names!
Are you interested in studying Welsh? Can you speak it? Let me know in the comments below.