How do you pronounce Ceinwen??

[PotPourri]

Is it Kane - wen? Thanks

no - it is incorrect to say My-nir. The Mei spelling is pronounced 'May' not My. The ei makes the AY sound!

It may be that South Walians pronounce it as they do and are happy to, but it is still incorrect. The sound is incorrect.

I'm another south Walian but now banished over the bridge to the Midlands.

I've tried to write down how I would pronounce a variety of things but have come to the conclusion the devil is in the accent.

Welsh names need welsh accents. There is an english chap at work called Geraint and every time he or anyone else says his name I chuckle.

Weeeeell. the vowel does change and that is ok. Welsh is notorious for mad vowel shifting wherever you go.

(I'm a bilingual speech and language therapist so can talk phonetics and phonology aaaaaaaaall day if anyone wants to take me on.)

I don't think it is correct or incorrect.

Welsh dialects and accents are very different, just like english. Is it wrong to pronounce "Bath" with the long a or the short a? Both are correct, I would suggest.

Moondog - bizarrely I live in the same road as my brother's best friend from home who coaches at said club. At recent Wales six nations decider it was like a mini- Cardiff in Cyw.

Even poor identity-confused DS is poured into a Welsh jersy for the big matches!

I love the idea of that little Kazakh/English/Welsh boy in his gear!

We do the same-lever my sister's half Korean kids into all manner of patriotic get up.Goes down a storm on the mean streets of Seoul.

HIJACK - PS Moondog, I've been owrking hard on DS's speech - loads and loads of open questions and offering choices and "I understand you could you say it again" and repeating correct sounds etc and ....big breakthrough "Pee" has now corrected itself to "poo" and more two word sentances appearing.

Ta for advice.

Why are people from Llanelli called Turks, kew?

hang on will find a phot and post on profile

Ooh excellent Kew.
Glad to hear it.
Arrival of two word utterances is a pivotal occurence.

not really. It's either a short A or not, that's an accent not a spelling.

The combination of CEI givess the sound CAY. It's a bit like French or German, you'd want to pronounce them correctly surely?

BtS,it depends entirely on whether you are taking a prescriptive or prescriptive approach.

I don't tell North Walians who pronounce rhedeg as ^rhedAg' that they are wrong. that is how they pronounce it.

How would you pronounce Niamh or Siobhan?

two theories I heard - one was to do with turkish prisoners from the Middle East campaigns put to work loading and unloading ships in Llanelli docks. Another theory dates back to 1800's when Llanelli was a much bigger trading post and the turks came to buy steel copper etc and many stayed - apparetnly the leader of the turkish revolution against the spanish was a mr Baden Evans who came from llanelli. (NO idea if that is true or not)

V. interesting Kew.

BtS,orthography (writing) has very little relation to pronuniciation.
George Bernard Shaw made the point for example that in English, 'ghoti' could be a written form of the spoken word 'fish'.
How so?

'gh' as in the end sound in 'enough'
'o' as in the first vowel in 'women'
'ti' as in the middle sound in 'motion'

The answer to it all is to use the International Phonetic Alphabet and free youselves from the tyranny of erratic spelling patterns as all salts do!

(I can pronounce those-had an Irish bf for years!)

Cali,they are both ok!!!
However,what you choose to call yourself is another matter.

Similarly I want to dash the brains out of those who call me Bethun and not Bethan.

bizarrely I hated it when my full name (Susan) is mangled by the Llanelli accent - Si-ew-uh-zan (how many syllables is it possible to get from a two syllable word!). I shortened it as soon as possible.

Bronwyn would be pronounced as bronwin (but is masculine) Bronwen however is bronounced Bronwen

Hana, you have a Bronwen usually (pronounced 'when' although no doubt some silly buggers on Anglesey insist on saying something obtuse just to wind us all up a bit more.)

is Bronwyn a boys name (just wondering?)

I dont' know of any.The masculine form of the adsjective (wyn) refers to the noun it describes and not sex of person named thoguh.

People will know how to pronouce it just so long as you tell them.

Anyway, there are people from all over the world in this country with names that many of you would deem to be difficult to pronounce.

I think it's a lovely name and I wouldn't worry if some people insist of being unable to pronounce it.

no one want to tell me how they pronounce Niamh or Siobhan?