“Celtic English”

The article examines the phonology of Rhondda Valleys English, an accent of the Welsh “Valleys”, to try to discover to what degree it is influenced by the Welsh language. It finds some features of segmental phonology which appear to be direct transfers. However, most of these appear to be recessive, since they are found mostly in the speech of older generations born at a time when there was considerably more Welsh spoken in the Rhondda than at present. The article lists other non-standard features of segmental phonology where parallel sounds exist in the Welsh language, but it cannot be stated with certainty that Welsh is the primary source. In such cases, the Welsh substratum may be acting at least to reinforce the presence of the features concerned. Finally, the article looks at the suprasegmentals (prosody) of Rhondda Valleys English. Here, because the similarities with the Welsh language are so striking and there are no obvious parallels with neighbouring dialects of England, it would seem very likely that most of the features concerned constitute direct transfers. Since such Welsh-language derived suprasegmental features seem more pervasive than the segmental ones, they may well form the strongest and most enduring “Celtic imprint” on the dialect studied.