How do you pronounce...?

[LadyOfTheTrees]

How do you pronounce "awen" and "gwersi" and what language are they, i.e. irish, welsh, etc.?

Thanks!

[Equidae]

Have you tried Googling/YouTubing them? There are a bunch of translator sites out there that have recordings of people saying stuff like that.

[Heddwen]

They are Welsh and the pronounciation is AH-WEN and GW AIR-SEE, this should become clearer if you are following the OBOD course.

[Duellist]

They are Welsh and the pronounciation is AH-WEN and GW AIR-SEE, this should become clearer if you are following the OBOD course.

I'm sure the gwersi (gwersi?) describe awen as having three syllables - Ah-ooh-ain - rather than two, but that might just be for the rituals...

[Bracken]

Hi LadyOfTheTrees.

At some point in your bardic course (I can't remember exactly where) you are sent a cd with native speakers reading out some of the unfamiliar words so you are able to hear them being spoken.

[treegod]

And it might be a long shot, but if you're familiar with IPA, or have the patience to learn it, there might be references to what "phones" to use.

This Welsh orthography might give some clues, with English approximations displayed on the side (though which English accent, I don't know ).

awen /auɛn/ or /aue:n/(former seems more likely than the latter):aw is like English how, e could be a short bed or long hey and n like net. But that's just Wiki, and gives approximations. I pronounce it as Heddwen says: AH-WEN (ah, when? )

"Gwersi" is more complicated, with around 18 different possibilities. I'm not going to go through all of them (you can see them on the Welsh orthography link above). And the extent to which different dialects might differ... For me "gwersi" rhymes with "mercy", which probably doesn't sound anything like Heddwen's "GW AIR-SEE" .

I've recently discovered all of this phonology stuff, hope you don't mind me indulging myself.

EDIT: I've just seen the Scottish orthography, so much more complicated. Maybe I should go for Welsh instead lol.

[Heddwen]

Opt for the Welsh Treegod!

I am merely pronouncing the words as we would here in Mid Wales, of course it would be different in other areas of Wales. The version of gwersi that rhymes with 'mercy' sounds a bit scouse to me, but that's ok because folks in some parts of North Wales such as Mold, have a scouseish accent !

I've not heard Awen pronounced with the three syllables before,it tends to rhyme with 'amen' , even though the letter'w' is pronounced OO

[treegod]

I've already started on the Scottish I'm afraid. And it was spoken by my great grandmother and her daughters, I'm not sure about Welsh in the family (though it may have been). I wouldn't mind trying Welsh one day.... after Spanish and Catalan (I live in NE Spain) and French (I live with Francophones)

"awen" is two syllables. "aw" part of it is a dipthong, which is two vowel sounds in one syllable. It "slides" from one to the other, then "en" is another syllable. Technical stuff that I'm starting to get my head around lol.

I'm not a scouse, but I've just been pronouncing "gwersi" as I read it.

Scottish has no standard pronounciation. It gives me difficulty when listening to the learning tapes, I hear one version of a word and then another, and I'm not sure which one to go with! I'll end up with a patchwork of Gaelic dialects in my pronunciation, with a strong Sasannach influence.

[LadyOfTheTrees]

Great! Thanks for all the information, everyone. I'm still awaiting my first gwers with baited breath. I'm assuming it will probably take three weeks for it to arrive here from Engalnd - I'm in the US. Especially since I just signed up and they have to get the whole monthly payment arrangement sorted out and such...

Thanks again,

[Duellist]

"awen" is two syllables. "aw" part of it is a dipthong, which is two vowel sounds in one syllable. It "slides" from one to the other, then "en" is another syllable.

Well, it's not hard to understand diphthongs if you say them out loud and let the first bleed into the second.

Ah-oo -> ow
Ah-ee -> eye
Eh-ee -> ay

And so on...

As such, there's no real issue with splitting 'Awen' into the three (vowel-sound) syllables of 'ah-oo-en' or just as the shorter 'ow-en' or 'ah-wen' pronunciations.

[Welsh Mythology]

Awen = two syllables: 1st – aw, as in 'aw that hurt' or the 'ou' in 'ouch'; 2nd – en, as in den. The main accent is on the first syllable.

Gwersi = a bit tricky, but actually two syllables again: 1st – gw, a very short pronounce goo, then er as in sterile (always roll your 'r' s in Welsh) this is all one syllable so try fitting it all in to one accent; 2nd – si, as in the Spanish 'si' or English 'see' but much shorter vowel sound.