The Welsh Alphabet

Here is the whole alphabet in order: a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y. That makes 29 letters. Some older lists leave out j and count 28. J appears in borrowed words such as jeli (jelly) and jiráff (giraffe).

A digraph is two characters that work as one letter. Welsh has eight. Four of them end in h: ch, ph, rh and th. Three are doubled letters: dd, ff and ll. The eighth is ng. Each one stands for one sound. So llaeth (milk) has only four letters: ll + a + e + th. Not every n next to a g is the letter ng, though: in Llongyfarchiadau (Congratulations) the n and the g are separate letters.

This matters when you use a dictionary. Each digraph has its own place in the order: ch comes after c, dd after d, ff after f, ng after g, ll after l, ph after p, rh after r and th after t. If a word starting with ll is not among the l words, keep going: it has its own section.

Welsh has seven vowels: the five you know from English, a, e, i, o and u, plus w and y. Yes, w and y are usually vowels (see W and Y as vowels). Welsh writes the k sound with c (coffi) and the v sound with f (afal), so k and v are not needed; see F, FF, DD and TH. Letters like k, q, v, x and z can still turn up in foreign names.

One more tip for the dictionary: the first letter of a Welsh word can change after certain words. For example, cath (cat) becomes gath in y gath. Dictionaries list the unchanged form, so learn that first. See initial consonant mutations.