Pronunciation Guide

The names and places in Mawr are based on Irish and Welsh.

 

The High Tongue (Irish)

If something has lots of vowels and no ‘y’s, or if it has an accent mark, it’s probably Irish, and Irish is simple once you know a few rules:

  • if there’s a bunch of vowels, ignore all of them but the one with the accent; if there’s no accent, i usually wins
  • if there’s one vowel, it’s probably a dipthong like “uh” as in Aoife pronounced “EE-fuh”
  • an h after a consonant (or an i after an s) softens it, so SH and SI are both “sh“, TH is a breathy “h“, MH is “v“

Examples:

  • Foraoíse – “for-EE-shuh”
  • Tuhál = “too-HAHL”
  • Cahál – “cu-HAHL”

The Low Tongue (Welsh)

If something looks unpronounceable, it’s Welsh.

  • actually pronounce all the vowels. So Dael is “Da-ul”, Mawr is “Mau-ur”, etc.
  • w is a vowel pronounced like “oo”
  • f is a v. v is an f. Get over it
  • y is “uh”
  • no one knows how to pronounce u so make it up
  • ll is a guttural throat sound, like clearing your throat. Similar to the Arabian guttural
  • dd is the sound of th in the word “the”

Examples:

  • Tranwyn – “TRAN-u-win”
  • Pynwydden = “PUN-wuh-thin”
  • Cwyn – “CU-win”

Generally, Celtic words put the stress on the first syllable unless there’s an accent, so MAwr, DAel.
But because of accent marks: caHAL, tuHAL (accent marks put emphasis).

Hope that deconfuses!


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