- Da osódiad hyd i sawdl.—D.N., g. 158,
‑l answers a syllable ‑iad in the cynghanedd, though it does not count as a syllable in the metre, an inconsistency which shows that such a word as this, treated as a monosyllable in verse generally, sounded like a disyllabic when it ended a sentence.]
In the spoken language, when the word was disyllabic the final liquid was lost, thus perig, ffenest for perigl ‘danger’, ffenestr ‘window’, or metathesized as in ewyrth for ewythr ‘uncle’. In monosyllables the glide was assimilated to the vowel of the syllable or the second element of its diphthong and became syllabic; thus pobol, cefen, llwɥbɥr, sowdwl, bara’ for pobl ‘people’, cefn ‘back’, llwybr ‘path’, sawdl ‘heel’, barf ‘beard’. Some examples of this assimilation already appear in Late Ml. W., as budur Ỻ.a. 18 ‘dirty’, kwbwl c.m. 87 ‘all’, vy maraf r.m. 42 ‘my beard’.—The colloquial syllabic pronunciation is the one generally implied in recent verse in the free metres; thus Anne Griffiths’s Llwybr cwbl groes i natur, though so printed in all hymn-books, is intended to be sung Llẃybyr | cẃbwl | gróes i | nátur. But in N. W. dialects the parasitic vowel did not arise in groups containing f; thus in the greater part of N. W. ofn, ‘fear’, cefn ‘back’, llyfr ‘book’, barf ‘beard’ are purely monosyllabic to this day. Forms like march, calch are everywhere monosyllabic.
¶ For prosthetic ỿ- see § 21 iii, § 23 ii, § 26 vi (4).The Consonants.
§ 17. The values of the letters representing consonants in the Mn. alphabet are as follows:
i. Voiceless explosives (tenues): p ≡ English p; t, normally more dental than Eng. t, but varying to Eng. t; c ≡ Eng. k, having two sounds, front c (k̑) before i, e, like k in Eng. king, back c (q) before a, o, w, u ỿ, like c in Eng. coal.
ii. Voiced explosives (mediae): b ≡ Eng. b; d corresponding to W. t as above; g front and back (g̑, ɡ], like Eng. give, go.
iii. Voiceless spirants: ff or ph ≡ Eng. f, labiodental; th ≡ Eng. th in thick (which may be denoted by þ); ch ≡ Scotch ch in loch, German ch in nach (χ), but not German ch in ich (χ̑). Even after e and i, as in llēch ‘slate’, gwīch ‘squeak’, the ch is the back sound χ.
i + back χ is an awkward combination, and becomes difficult in the short time available when the i is the second element of a diphthong; hence baich, braich are generally pronounced băɥχ, brăɥχ (with the short a of the original diphthong). This pronunciation is condemned by D., p. 10; but the spelling ay is common earlier, e.g. J.D.R. 271. But beichiau, breichiau are so sounded, with back χ (not χ̑).
