# Pronunciation : Llanyvgan (invented Welsh place name)



## Negaran

hi,
I am reading The Pendragon Legend. Is the Welsh pronunciation of the word  Llanyvgan different from its English pronunciation? 
In the book Llanyvgan is name of a Castle in Wales.


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## JulianStuart

Probably  I expect most non-Welsh people will mangle it - very few know how to pronounce Welsh words.
One of our regular members speaks Welsh and can give you a better idea.


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## Glasguensis

The most important difference is that Llan is pronounced like Hlan with an aspirated H. This sound doesn’t exist in English, which is one of the reasons many English speakers have difficulty with Welsh place names.


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## AndrasBP

Negaran said:


> Llanyvgan


It's Llan*vy*gan.

The author of the book was a Hungarian, by the way.
Maybe he was inspired by Llanfechan 👈? 
The letter <f> is pronounced /v/.


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## Negaran

JulianStuart said:


> Probably  I expect most non-Welsh people will mangle it - very few know how to pronounce Welsh words.
> One of our regular members speaks Welsh and can give you a better ide





AndrasBP said:


> It's Llan*vy*gan.
> 
> The author of the book was a Hungarian, by the way.
> Maybe he was inspired by Llanfechan 👈?
> The letter <f> is pronounced /v/.


thanks. I found this pronunciation klan·veuh·veh·kn .Based on this pronunciation, can I say that the word Llanyvgan is also pronounced like this: klan·ve.gan or klane·ve.gan ?


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## Tegs

No, the digraph "ll" is not pronounced "kl". 


Negaran said:


> I found this pronunciation klan·veuh·veh·kn


That's the how an English speaker with no Welsh would pronounce Llanfairfechan. It's not at all close to the Welsh pronunciation. 

In IPA, "ll" is given as  [ɬ]. If you put that into YouTube, you'll find a video with a pronunciation. That's only the initial "Ll" digraph in your placename though. 

The Welsh pronunciation of many placenames is very different from how an English speaker attempts to pronounce them. Often, the spellings are different in both languages too.


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## Stoggler

Negaran said:


> hi,
> I am reading The Pendragon Legend. Is the Welsh pronunciation of the word  Llanyvgan different from its English pronunciation?
> In the book Llanyvgan is name of a Castle in Wales.



Llanvygan is not a plausible Welsh name.  At best it’s an anglicized version of a Welsh name.


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## entangledbank

The letter <v> was used in older Welsh for what is now written <f>, so it's not entirely wrong. Let's write it Llanyfgan (or should it be Llanfygan?) so it looks like proper Welsh.

No English speaker could possibly pronounce Welsh names properly without studying Welsh to some degree - it's very unlike English in general, and in particular its sound system and its spelling system are very unlike.

To me, no expert on Welsh, Llanfygan looks a lot more realistic. The stress would be on the middle syllable, _-fy-_, and it would be closer to the English sounds beginning the words _vulture, vulgar_.


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## Welsh_Sion

If it is *Llanfygan* (a made up name) then it should be transcribed as /ɬan'vəgan/.

Obviously, if *Llanyfgan*, then, /ɬan'əvgan/.

The /ɬ/ phoneme is the famous 'voiceless lateral alveolar fricative'.

<v> is no longer part of the Welsh alphabet (although it exists in some foreign words borrowed it does exist in initial position.) Its replacement is <f>, *always* pronounced as /v/.

*Fychan* /'vəXan/ (a form of *bychan*  'small') is borrowed into English as the proper noun 'Vaugh(a)n'.


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## AndrasBP

Welsh_Sion said:


> Obviously, if *Llanyfgan*, then, /ɬan'əvgan/.


No, 'Llan*yf*gan' is a typo.


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## Welsh_Sion

I suspected it might be @AndrasBP - just covering my bases!


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## AndrasBP

Here's an excerpt from the original Hungarian text by Antal Szerb 👈.
The highlighted sentence means "you are certain to experience the most extraordinary things in Llanvygan".


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