How Do You Say Llanfairpwll…?

Everyone was blown away the other day when Liam Dutton managed to effortlessly pronounce the longest ever Welsh place name on live TV: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

Anything He Can Do…

I don’t know about you, but here at the EuroTalk office we enjoy a healthy challenge, and this looked like just the sort of thing to get our teeth into! For all those of you who’ve seen our video… Okay, maybe it didn’t go exactly according to plan, and didn’t sound entirely as fluent as Liam Dutton’s version, not to mention that our varying collections of vaguely Welsh-sounding syllables probably didn’t mean anything at all in Welsh, let alone bore a resemblance to the actual meaning of the word, which is (take a breath): ‘Saint Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio of the red cave’.

Still, practice makes perfect, and this was just our first time. If anyone would like to try to do it better than us (which is probably not too much to ask), why not enter our competition to win a FREE Premium Welsh uTalk app. We’ll be picking the winner based on the creativity of the video, and your attempt to pronounce the word. To enter, tweet us @EuroTalk, post it on our Facebook page or email it to challenge@eurotalk.com by Friday 25th September.

So, How Should We Have Pronounced It?

To make it slightly easier, here’s a few pointers we used as to how to pronounce it:

1. It helps to break the word down into bite-sized chunks: Llan – fair – pwll – gwyn – gyll – go – ger – ych – wyrn – drob – wll – llan – ty – silio – go – go – goch

2. Some of the letters have different pronunciation in Welsh to how you would say them in English. For example:

• the ‘f’ in ‘fair’ is pronounced more like a ‘v’, to make ‘vire’

• the ‘y’ in ‘gwyn’ i pronounced more like an ‘i’, to make ‘gwin’

• the ‘w’ in ‘pwll’ is more of an ‘oo’, to make ‘pooll’ AND

• the ‘ll’ in ‘pwll’ is more of an aspirated l (keep the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth as you say ‘l’, then blow the air over the top and sides of your tongue)

• the ‘ch’ in ‘goch’ is the same as in the Scottish ‘loch’

Taking that all into account, you end up with something which to English speakers looks a bit more like this:

Chlan-vire-puchl-gwin-guchl-go-ger-uch-wirn-drob-uchl-chlan-ti-silio-go-go-goch

So now that you know it, why not have a go at recording it yourself?

Nat