I recently posed a question on another forum about comparing learning Welsh vs. learning Irish. I have tried several times to learn Welsh and invariably give up in frustration. I do have some Irish, however, and find it to be more learner-friendly (for a Celtic language). I pointed out what I thought were some problems with learning Welsh. They were:
inconsistent use of long marks over vowels (circumflex);
the various pronunciation of the vowel "y";
the spelling of mutated consonants (unlike Gaeilge and Gáidhlig where the original root word is still visible despite séimhiú and urú);
(I could have mentioned the use of "f" for a "v" sound, but didn't.) One respondent agreed that the inconsistent use of long marks was a valid point and went on to suggest that they be pronounced as "half-long". This person did not address the "y" issue, but went on to say that the mutations made little difference in the spoken languages. I suppose this is true in some respect: the illiterate Irish speaker is in the same boat as a Welsh speaker. I cannot understand how Welsh is more viable than Irish. Would someone who has studied both Irish and Welsh care to contrast the two? No offence to our fellow Celtic-speakers is intended by this query.

I've studied a bit of all Celtic languages and speak two fluently (Breton and Irish). Welsh is much easier than Irish. Irish is very complicated in syntax, spelling, pronounciation and morphology (since it has declensions, Welsh has not).

The problems you are pointing out are basic problems mainly about spelling and pronounciation. However, given you work enough, they are easily overcome. For the pronounciation of "y", it must be explained somewhere in your handbook.
Circumflex marks just help you to know how to pronounce vowels and diphthongs. And they don't happen so often actually. They are just hard to type except on Winword.

For the spelling of the mutated consonants, it's quite easy given you have learnt in which contexts you would have mutations and how every consonant mutates. There are consonants that are only the result of mutation (mh, ngh, f, dd, th, etc).

Maybe Welsh seems to be harder for you because it is unclearly explained in your handbook. That can change everything. If you have a bad book, a language can seem very complicated, while it would seem dead easy with another book in which rules are more clearly explained. Which Welsh book do you use?

(Message edited by lughaidh on October 16, 2005)

I find rather ludicrous the fact that a lot of English speakers (and there have been some on this forum) complain about the spelling of other languages, considering that the English spelling (the complainers may not realize it) is probably the most haphazard on earth.

Like Lughaidh, I've studied at least a bit of all living Celtic languages and speak two, Irish and Welsh.

I've never before heard anyone say that Welsh would be harder than Irish, quite the opposite. I know quite a number of people who have studied both languages, and everyone agree that Welsh is very much the easier language to learn.

The correspondence between spelling and pronunciation in Welsh is in fact one of the most regular and consistent in Europe. I've tested this on some friends - 15 minutes of instruction is enough to pronounce Welsh words correctly. There is nothing hard about Welsh spelling. There are two different pronunciations of "y" but every course states clearly in which case which is used. After having at least acquainted myself with every European language with more than one million speakers (and some smaller) I can safely say that Welsh spelling is very straightforward and easy to use.

The difference to English and Irish is striking, being two of the most inconsistent languages in terms of spelling. In the case of Irish, there are rules but they are very complicated and not readily understandable for learners. English is of course a different matter altogether. Not even Monty Python could have come up with such a silly spelling (no offence intended). Of all the more than 6000 languages that exist in the world, none has a more inconsistent, unlogic and bizarre ortography than English (or possibly Manx). :-)

To sum up: the irregularities in Welsh spelling can summed up in a few short points. The same thing can be done for the regularities of English... I could easily list 50 major inconsistences in Englisg spelling but not one in Welsh.

But to get back to the original question. Welsh is a very easy language to learn. Not only is it much easier than Irish, it is indeed one of the easiest Indo-European languages.

What do you think are the most complicated things about Irish spelling? I always hated those f's that we don't pronounce in the future tense ie caithfidh

Personally, I love Irish spelling...

I don't find anything hard in Irish spelling, but that's of course because I know it. For beginners, it's almost impossible.

Generally speaking, the ideal (according to most) is the golden rule that there is just one letter for each sound and just one sound for each letter. Languages such as Serbian (Cyrillic alphabet) and Finnish (Latin alphabet) are examples of such languages. Once you know the alphabet, you immediately know how a word should be pronounced even if you haven't seen it before.

Few languages are as regular, but most are fairly regular. German, Italian, Spanish and Russian generally follow that golden rule, although with some exceptions in each language. French is already deviating quite strongly, but at least there is some regularity in French spelling.

The "problem" in Irish or English spelling is that the link between a given letter and sound is very weak. How is "e" pronounced in English? As in "hEr", "gEt", "namE" or "fEEl" to name just one example. Irish is not as bad, but what confuses learners are the many silent letters. In contrast to English, these are determined by rules, so Irish is closer to French in this regard. Both have rules although they don't follow the golden rule mentioned already. English is just a mess.

I find it interesting that native speakers of these three irregular languages are so much worse than other Europeans when it comes to learning foreign languages. As is well known, far less people in the UK, Ireland and France speak any foreign language as compared to other European countries. Is it because their own language is a dominating world language or is it because the inconsistencies in their alpabets? It could of course be a combination of both... :-)

A Chairde,
Go raibh míle maith agaibh for the responses. I have been studying Irish for quite a while so perhaps I am more indulgent (or tolerant) of Irish because I am more familiar with it, warts and all.
I actually would like to learn some Welsh as my grandmother was able to speak some.
Just out of curiosity, what Welsh courses would you suggest as the most helpful?
And while I'm at it, what Irish courses would you suggest? I have been somewhat disappointed in the courses that attempt to meld the various Irish dialects: a native Irish-speaker once told me the "generic" Irish made one sound as if they were in the media.
Another question I had posed on the Welsh messageboard was as to why you never see Welsh shown in the IPA; I personally would find it useful even tho the Welsh speakers respond that the language is so phonetic that it isn't necessary. Yet there are courses utilizing English-based phonetic spellings, and we all know about English spelling.
I still feel that the Gaelics (except for Manx) handle the mutations better because of the "eclipsis" and "aspiration" spelling conventions, but that's a subjective judgment on my part. Slán go fóill.

Some very good questions there. There are (at least) three rather good Welsh courses around. Welsh in 3 months, Teach Yourself Welsh (the newest version) and Colloquial Welsh. Colloquial Welsh is the most extensive and I'd probably recommend that one. Knowing it was enough for me to be able to get around Wales in Welsh, the Welsh are very friendly when you learn Welsh and very forgiving of learner mistakes. In Ireland, many people immediately switch to English if they notice you're a learner, but in Wales they just speak a bit slower.

I'd definitely recommend Learning Irish as the best Irish course around. It focuses on one single dialect and is very extensive. It's probably the only Irish course that has been translated into some other languages than English.

As for Welsh rarely being showed in IPA, there's a very logic explanation. Most Irish, English and French dictionaries include IPA for the pronunciation and quite a few language courses on these languages do so as well. The reason is that beginners, or even more advanced learners, often have problems knowing how to pronounce words correctly. In Welsh (or German, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, Finnish etc.), neither dictionaries nor courses make frequent use of the IPA because the pronunciation is immediately obvious from the spelling. If you look at a Finnish text and the same text in IPA, you'll find that they look almost identical. Finnish uses double letters (kk, aa) for ":" (/k:/, /a:/) but otherwise it's the same. I'm almost sure that's the reason, there isn't really any need to show Welsh in IPA.

There are cases in which IPA is used. The linguistic atlas of Welsh dialects makes full use of IPA and books or articles on Welsh phonology do the same thing.

If you have any other questions on this subject, just fire away! :-)

Jonas, how is your Friulian?

By the way, English spelling is not *completely* regular, but it is quite regular if a large number of rules are learned and a knowledge of historical linguistics is brought to bear. The examples you gave of "her", "get", "name" and "feel" are examples of perfectly regular spelling. All of these words are pronounced exactly as the word indicates, once the rules of English pronunciation are learned. As for spelling: admittedly "her" could have been spelled "hir" or "hur", and "get" could be "gett" and "feel" could be "feal", as all of those, had they been words, would have had the same pronunciations. Once you realise that "ir", "er" and "ur" are all pronounced the same, you are well on your way to mastering English. As for "name", well this was pronounced differently in the 1300s. There would be massive resistance to spelling reform in England. I know the Swedes and the Russians, as well as the Irish, implemented spelling reforms, but England is a freer country than any of those, and language and culture is simply not for the government to tinker with. Our language expresses its history: that is why English is the greatest language in the world, and, indeed, England's greatest gift to Ireland.

(Message edited by djwebb2002 on October 17, 2005)

>Our language expresses its history: that is why English >is the greatest language in the world,

What do you mean by "greatest" ?

Creideann mórán Gall é sin. Tá SAM i mbarr a réime faoi láthair, agus toisc gur bhronn na Sacsan Béarla orthu, creideann siad gurbh crann smola na teangacha é!

DJ Webb, English has been prominent only for a few instants in history yet - it is early days to be proclaiming its superiority.

---

Milis an teanga an Ghaedhealg,
Guth gan chabhair choigcricíche,
Glór, géar-chaoin, glé, glinn, gasta
suairc, séimhidhe, sult-bhlasta.
Gide Eabhra teanga is seanda,
gide laidean is léigheanta,
uatha uirthi níor frith linn
fuaim nó focal de chomhainn.
Seathrún Céitinn.

I don't see why a language would be superior by itself... SAM are "superior" nowadays because they have more money, that's all. If they spoke Polish, Irish or Tagalog it would have been the same... Nothing to do with the superiority of the language, no language is superior to another one (how would it be?)

The White Man's Burden, dtuigeann tú

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111kip.html

"By the way, English spelling is not *completely* regular, but it is quite regular if a large number of rules are learned and a knowledge of historical linguistics is brought to bear. "

Still the most irregular European language by far.

"All of these words are pronounced exactly as the word indicates, once the rules of English pronunciation are learned."

The simple point was that there is a weak correspondence between a given letter and a given pronunciation.


"I know the Swedes and the Russians, as well as the Irish, implemented spelling reforms, but England is a freer country than any of those, and language and culture is simply not for the government to tinker with. Our language expresses its history: that is why English is the greatest language in the world, and, indeed, England's greatest gift to Ireland. "

Too many funny points in there.

>"All of these words are pronounced exactly as the word >indicates, once the rules of English pronunciation are >learned."

In Irish as well...

>England is a freer country than any of those,

Than Russia, ok. Than Sweden... give me evidences :-)

Mmm. Il y a un mot français qui on a importé on Anglais - chauvainisme...


DJ Webb - Russian, Swedish, German and Irish have less dispersed speakers of the langauge, and recognised authorities on questions of language - which makes it possible to implement a reform. To suggest that this makes the speakers of those languages less free, or English superior, is risible.

>Mmm. Il y a un mot français qui on a importé on >Anglais - chauvainisme...

Tá ’s agam sin (chauvinisme > chauvinism). Mais pourquoi tu dis ça? Ní fheicim a’ bhaint lenár inis muid roimhe sin... Ab é Sasanach é Djwebb?

Je suppose qu'il ne soit pas, mais nous parlons de la langue - et pas du pays. Wahrscheinlich meint er doch nichts besonders damit, aber ich verstehe natürlich, dass die Iren über die Behauptung sich beleidigt fühlen. Mar a tá a fhios againn go léir, is í Béarla an teanga a dhein teanga mhionlaigh as an dteanga so - agus ní féidir le éinne a rá go bhfuil teanga éigint níos fearr ná aon teanga eile...

Nouns n'avons pas besoin d'Anglais - Wir brauchen nicht Englisch - Ní gá dúinn úsáid a bhaint as Béarla :-)

DJ Webb,
nice to see good old Tory unreconstructivism is at play.

So what does your other Little Englander friends make of you learning, as Swift called it, a 'canine tongue'?

To suggest English was a gift because historical contingencies have panned out such that it is of great international import, is like a rapist wishing credit for making a victim less naive and more streetwise after prolonged abuse.

I dont want to hear such arrogance and hollow crap here again from any Englishman.

quote:

Ab é Sasanach é Djwebb?

Is ea. C'était ma raison.

Vraiment? J'ai pensé qu'il est des États-Unis et d'origine irlandais.

I though he was...

If not...

[red face]

"I find rather ludicrous the fact that a lot of English speakers (and there have been some on this forum) complain about the spelling of other languages, considering that the English spelling (the complainers may not realize it) is probably the most haphazard on earth."



I think it has to do with the societal attitudes toward other cultures in the three main places english is spoken (both in terms of world power and representation on this board) - the us, uk and anglo-urban-irish-of-a-uk-tradition.

there is great resistance to learning another language in any of those places already - even when there is another language present (and native) in ireland! americans didn't invent the cultural elitism for which we find ourselves reviled, we inherited it from the brits, and to a degree, so did the irish...at least in their most heavily influenced pockets (where are the strongest anti-gaeilge movements?)

(Message edited by antaine on October 18, 2005)

I agree with Antaine. Especially in England, there's a very strong tendency to view English as the norm. So English spelling is the "correct" way to spell, even though it's out of line with all the other European languages. The English election system, while poked fun at throughout Europe, is also seen as the correct way to elect parliaments. Just as your intelligence is measured by your knowledge of English. A Spanish, French or Russian professor who doesn't know English is by definition unintelligent. If he knows some English, he's funny. And so on...

In defence of the Americans, I've found them less likely to have the same extreme views. Then again, I've never been to the States - all the Americans I've met are those who visit European countries and usually knows quite a bit of the country they are visiting, so it might be a skewed sample.

At least I've found Americans to be at least a bit better than the English when it comes to learning foreign languages. True enough, they are still behind most Europeans, but clearly ahead of the English.

Dear all, I see no contradiction between loving English and learning Irish. You don't have to be anti-English to learn Irish. Irish writers and poets who have used English are part of the nation's heritage, and that cannot be reversed. Yes, I am English, not American. Jonas, you overlook the miracle whereby a language spoken in one tiny little corner of Europe became a world tongue. There was no sign that would happen in 1500, for example. Whatever you think of English and the English, you have got to wonder at that development. And it so happens that that language has the largest vocabulary in the world today. However, I am not denying that Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Cornish, Manx and Norn form part of the heritage of the British Isles too, and don't have a down on any of those.

The English election system: what's wrong with that? The more I learn of Finland, the less I like the country. The way the PR system works in Finland means that you get almost the same government in power all the time. The Swedish People's Party - which has done nothing to protect the Swedish language in Ostrobothnia - is a member of every coalition. The government in Sweden and Finland controls alcohol sales, and people wait at the side of the road waiting for "permission" to cross. To my way of thinking, Finland is a socialist country. Ireland shares in the greater level of freedom of the Anglosphere, including jury trials and the Common Law. No, no Englishman I have ever met judges foreigners on their knowledge of English. We are far more likely to marvel at their command of numerous languages, and the Finns are the foremost among the Europeans nations when it comes to learning languages, as you yourself prove.

Americans don't have extreme views? "You come from Finland? What state is that in? Is that in North Carolina?" Yes, you have met a skewed sample. The average American knows NOTHING of the world outside the States. And, no! Americans are not ahead of the English when it comes to learning foreign languages, with maybe the exception of Spanish.

"Dear all, I see no contradiction between loving English and learning Irish."

There is none. I have always taking a favourable attitude towards England myself.


"Jonas, you overlook the miracle whereby a language spoken in one tiny little corner of Europe became a world tongue."

You cannot possibly think that it happened because some inherit quality of the language itself? English is a dominant language because first England and then the US have been dominant players in the world. If Lithuania or Ireland had developed into a great power and colonized large parts of the world, Lithuanian or Irish would be the major world language.


"The English election system: what's wrong with that?"

Ask the liberal democrats. In most countries, the election system ensures the party with the largest number of votes to get the largest number of places in parliament. Not so in England.


"The way the PR system works in Finland means that you get almost the same government in power all the time. The Swedish People's Party - which has done nothing to protect the Swedish language in Ostrobothnia - is a member of every coalition. The government in Sweden and Finland controls alcohol sales, and people wait at the side of the road waiting for "permission" to cross. To my way of thinking, Finland is a socialist country. "

Not that I understand how we got into Finland, but some small comments.
No, we don't get the same government all the time. We have had more changes in government than the UK during the last 100 years.
Yes, the Swedish People's Party could probably do more. Saying that they have done nothing makes me wonder how closely you follow Finnish news.
Yes, the government in Sweden and Finland are controlling alcohol sales to a much larger extent than I would want.
As for Finland being socialist, it has never yet had an exclusively socialist government. I think Ireland and Finland are the only two European countries that has never had purely left governments. The UK has had a left party in goverment for the last 8 years now.


"shares in the greater level of freedom of the Anglosphere, including jury trials and the Common Law"

I'm struggling to see how jury trials would mean greater level of freedom. On the index of economic freedom for 2005, Finland and Sweden come between the US and Canada. In competiveness, Finland comes before the UK, Ireland and Canada. The level of corruption in the Nordic countries is below the level in every country in the Anglosphere.

The Americans may or may not be ahead of the English in learning foreign languages. Both of them could do with some improvement; as could any other country, especially Sweden in Finland - both have seen drops in every language except English during the last years.

Two reasons Americans may not be so anxious to learn other languages. First, our country is so large in size. We can cross 3000 miles and never find need to use another language, We can go north to Canada and never need to change language. This is unlike Europe, where if you like to travel, you are constantly crossing into areas where your native tongue is foreign to the inhabitants. Second, with very few exceptions, our ancestors arrived here with no English. They had to struggle to get along in a country whose language and customs were not theirs. They worked very hard to assimilate and were very proud when at last they mastered the language. To foreign-born Americans, English IS a second language. As for djweeb, his Colonel Blimp posturings have to be a put-on of some sort.

Jonas, I could witter on about jury trials and freedom, but it continues a point that is very off-topic. But English spelling is fairly regular, but deviates from regularity to reveal its linguistic history. In the same way, the Irish spelling reform *could* have opted for a much, much more phonetic style of writing, but at the expense of destroying the links between related words and at the expense of snapping the link with Old and Middle Irish.

None of which backs up your claim that "English is the greatest language"

I'm quite fond of english, but to state any language is "the greatest" is ....

For purely objective reasons, I consider German to be a far better language to write software specifications in than english - and I have years of experience with both.

And the imprecision of english is one reason that latin continued for years to be used for law (and still is by the Roman Catholic Church).

English regular? my ass two, too, to, mouse mice fish fishes? wrong djwebb totally wrong! I am an American,I speak two languages with a small ability in two others I travel (18 countries not including Mexico and Canada & Puerto Rico) please refrain from stupid generalities about us....not all English have bad teeth and don't shower....mmmmm previous post about stereotypes and such.....

Im sorry but to say one language is simply better is RIDICULOUS.
And this is me saying this folks!!! English is no better or worse than Gaeilge or swahili
Yes some languages have status, big numbers, power, history, literature etc etc etc.. But it makes no sense to say a language is better than another!

Jones, just a little digression here.. How many languages do you know? :-)

Depends of course on how you define knowing a language :-) I usually say ten. It does not in any way mean that I'm fluent in ten languages, but ten is the number of languages in which I can carry out a basic conversation or read newspapers.

Jonas, what are the 10? OK, Finnish, Swedish, English and Irish? What are the other 6?

Russian, Welsh, Croatian*, German, French and Portuguese.

None of these six is fluent, but I can read books in all of them and carry out normal conversations.

*These days Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian are recognised as three different languages, but I haven't added Bosnian or Serbian to my CV. Neither have I done it with Norwegian, Danish or Estonian although I understand more of those languages than of any of the six mentioned above. :-)

Bulaí fir a Jonas. Félicitations.

Well if you are thinking about adding Bosnian, Serbian, Norwegian, Danish and Estonian to your list, how about Lowland Scots? :-)

I just got Teach Yourself Welsh. Very nice book, orthography is amazingly easy. I love it.