II. Welsh English

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 439.

As everyone probably knows Wales is a bilingual area. This speech situation in linguistics is known as exoglossic. In Wales English dominates over Welsh in urban areas, in the west and north-west of the country the balance being in favour of Welsh, where English is learnt at schools as a second language. At the moment nationalistic feelings are rather strong in Wales and we are witnessing a movement in favour of the revival of the Welsh language and its spread in all areas of Wales.

However, Welsh English at the level of educated speech and writing is not much different from that of English English. Most differences are found at the level of more localized dialects.

In this chapter we shall give a brief outline of Welsh English pronunciation standard.

The principal phonological differences between WE and RP are the following:

ln vowels

1. The distribution of [æ] and [a:] is as in the north of Eng­land. Last, dance, chance, etc. tend to have [æ] rather than [a].

2. unstressed orthographic "a" tends to be [æ] rather than [ə], e.g.: sofa ['so:fæ];

3. there is no contrast between [ʌ] and [ə]: rubber ['rəbə];

4. [ı] at the end is a long vowel: city ['sıti:];

5. in words like tune, few, used we find [iu] rather than [ju:]: tune [tiun];

6. [ei], [ɜu] may become monophthongs: bake [bɛ:k], boat

[bo:t];

7. the vowel [з:] as in girl is produced with rounded lips ap­proaching [o:];

8. the vowels [iə], [uə] do not occur in many variants of Welsh English: fear is ['fijə], poor is ['pu:wə].

ln consonants

1. W. E. is non-rhotic, [r] is a tap, or it is also called a flapped [r]. Intrusive and linking [r] do occur.

2. Consonants in intervocalic position, particularly when the preceding vowel is short are doubled: city ['sitti:].

3. Voiceless plosives tend to be strongly aspirated: in word final position they are generally released and without glottaliza-tion, e.g. pit [p^hit^h].

4. [l] is clear in all positions.

5. Intonation in Welsh English is very much influenced by the Welsh language.