Pronunciation guide

The ‘old tongue’ used by the people of the Land is derived from Celtic languages such as Welsh. General guidelines on pronunciation are as follows:

‘ll’ does not occur in English, in the glossary it is written as ‘LL’. The sound is made by partly opening the mouth, pressing the tongue against the roof of the mouth and blowing gently.

‘dd’, written as ‘TH’ in the glossary, is the hard th sound in ‘this’ and ‘that’ but not as in ‘path’.

‘a’ is always as in ‘cat’ and not as in ‘ape’.

‘e’ is always as in ‘pet’.

‘f’ is the v in ‘van’ while ‘ff’ is the f in ‘fan’.

‘c’ is always the hard ‘k’ sound in kid.

‘ch’ is similar to ck and pronounced as in the Scottish ‘loch’ and not the English ‘church’.

‘g’ is always hard as in ‘god’ and not as in ‘german’.

‘o’ is like in ‘on’ but not ‘open’.

‘i’ and ‘u’ are pronounced ‘ee’.

‘r’s should be rolled.

‘si’ is between the sh in ‘shone’ and the j of ‘john’.

‘w’ is oo as in ‘cool’.

‘y’ is sometimes the u sound in ‘run’, sometimes the i in ‘bin’ and occasionally the ee sound in ‘been’.

‘yw’ is pronounced ‘you’.

‘ae’, ‘ai’, ‘au’ and ‘ei’ are all pronounced ‘eye’.

‘eu’ is the oy in ‘boy’.