YR IAITH GYMRAEG - THE WELSH LANGUAGE

The Welsh language is one of the oldest surviving European languages and had remained comparatively unchanged until fairly recently when a simplified version was developed, mainly aimed at learners. Unlike English, which has altered so much over the centuries that it's almost impossible for someone in the 21st century to make much sense of writings in Early or Middle English, it is still possible for us to read and understand Welsh poetry from the early centuries of the last millennium.

Interestingly, the first known refence to samplers in modern literature comes from the 6th century poems of Tudur Aled, so it's not surprising that part of his couplet
"Aur wniadau a nodwydd,
Arfer o'r sampler yw'r swydd"
has been adopted as a motto by Cymdeithas Brodwaith Cymru.

Welsh, unlike English is a phonetic language - none of this nonsense of having half-a-dozen ways of pronouncing the same group of letters. (Think of the multiplicity of ways of pronouncing "ough"). With Welsh, WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU SAY.
People think it's an unpronounceable language - it's not, otherwise it wouldn't have survived for so long. It's just that the alphabet's different, so let's have a look at the Welsh alphabet.
There are 28 letters in the Welsh alphabet as opposed to the 26 in the English one and some may look rather surprising.

A	Always short, as in "cat".
B	No difference in pronunciation from English
C	Hard, as in "cat".
Ch	Yes this is a single letter! As in the Scottish "loch" or German "ich"
D	As in English
Dd	Another "single" letter. As "th" in "this".
E	Short as in pell-mell.
F	As the English "v" sound e.g. "very".
Ff	As the English f sound e.g. "feather".
G	Always hard as in "get".
Ng	No, I haven't made a mistake! Pronounced as the ng sound in "hang", not with the letters separated as in "finger"
H	Never silent. Always pronounced.
I	Can be either long as in "need" or short as in "sin".
L	As in English.
Ll	The letter that most people have trouble with. The best way of trying to pronounce it correctly is to put the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth and then try to say "s". It does work, honestly!
M	As in English "may".
N	As in English "new".
O	Short, as in "pot".
P	As in English "pot".
Ph	As in English "pheasant".
R	Rolled, as in "robin".
Rh	The "h" is always sounded following the "r"
S	A soft sound as in "sat".
T	As in English.
Th	As in "think". Compare the difference betweeen Th and Dd.
U	There are 2 versions. 1. Long - an "ee" sound - in South Wales it's an open sound, in North Wales, very guttural. 2. Short - as in "dim".
W	Generally a long "oo" sound as in "cool" but can also be a shorter sound as in "took".
Y	There are 3 versions of this letter. 1. Long sound similar to "ee". 2. Short sound as in "bin". 3. Obscure sound as in "fur". Pronunciation depends on where the letter comes in the word - you get to know with practice.

A circumflex accent (to bach or "little roof") over the vowels a,e,o,w,y, (yes the last 2 are vowels!) will lengthen the sound.