Yr Wyddor Gymraeg
The Welsh Alphabet
The Welsh Alphabet
The Welsh language is made up of 29 letters, 7 of which are vowels (a, e, i, o, u, w, y) . ‘J’ is used as a 29th letter as there is no equivalent letter/sound in Welsh for translation purposes.
Unlike the English alphabet, we don't have any of the following letters - K , Q , V , X and Z.
On the other hand, we do have double letters in our alphabet - CH, DD, FF, NG, LL, PH, RH and TH. Some of these letter sounds exist in English, but they are not classed as being one single letter.
Welsh is a phonetic language, which means that unfamiliar words can be broken into smaller sections and sounded out in order to help pronounce them. Once you know the letter sounds, reading and speaking Welsh becomes a lot easier.
Below is a list of video links to help you with pronouncing different letters and combined letter sounds of the Welsh alphabet.
a) Vowel Combinations (North Wales) /
b) Vowel Combinations (South Wales)
Diphthong Practice (Vowel combinations)