The indigenous language of Wales. It is also spoken by small communities in the United States and Argentina.
Like Breton, Welsh has discarded case endings for nouns; but verbs are elaborately inflected . The alternation of consonants, called mutation, is present (as in all Celtic languages). Welsh spelling closely matches the phonetics of the language (unlike English ). In most cases Welsh speakers will know how to pronounce a word they have never seen before.
The letter w can represent either a consonant or a vowel and y stands for two vowel sounds. The consonant fhas the sound of English v; ff of f; dd of th (as in then); and th of th (as in thin). The consonts ll are pronounced like English as thl. Welsh words are stressed on the second to last syllable and have a characteristic intonation.
Welsh has borrowed words throughout its history from Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, and extensively from English , but it still has a large native vocabulary of Celtic origin. Forty dialects have been identified in Wales.
| Name | Where spoken | Language Family | How many (000s) |
| Welsh | Wales | Indo-European (Celtic) | 500 |
Table source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, David Ctystal, Cambridge University Press
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