The phonology of Welsh is characterised by a number of sounds that do not occur in English and are rare in European languages, such as the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] and several voiceless sonorants (nasals and liquids), some of which result from consonant mutation. Stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable in polysyllabic words, while the word-final unstressed syllable receives a higher pitch than the stressed syllable.
Consonants[]
Welsh has the following consonant phonemes:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Lateral | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m̥ | m | n̥ | n | ŋ̊ | ŋ | ||||||||||||
| Stop | p | b | t | d | (tʃ) | (dʒ) | k | ɡ | ||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | θ | ð | s | (z) | ɬ | ʃ | χ | h | ||||||||
| Trill | r̥ | r | ||||||||||||||||
| Approximant | l | (ç) | j | (ʍ) | w | |||||||||||||
Vowels[]
The vowel phonemes of Welsh are as follows:
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | ɪ | iː | ɨ | ɨː | ʊ | uː |
| Mid | ɛ | eː | ə | (əː) | ɔ | oː |
| Open | a | aː | ||||