Welsh pronunciation is notoriously if not very accurately regarded as "difficult" - for English speakers at least, many overseas visitors to the Principality seem to find it much easier! It also varies not only with region, but even over distances as small as five or ten miles. This page is intended to help anyone having trouble getting their tongue around some of the places on the WHR route from Caernarfon to Porthmadog. Welsh speakers should be aware that although your webmaster is a long-term local resident, he is far from fluent in Welsh - corrections and alternatives are invited, as are your patience and tolerance!

As for the translations offered, remember that place names don't always have to mean anything as such; but Welsh place names have a strong tendency to be either descriptive or religious in character, which is why some of them occur in more than one place. Again, corrections, alternatives and suggestions are invited - but let's not get into the old chestnut of whether Porthmadog (formerly Portmadoc) is meant to commemorate William Alexander Madocks or Prince Madog ap Gruffydd (shall we settle on both?)...

Handy general principles (not a comprehensive list, culled from various sources)

• Words with more than one syllable have the emphasis on the last syllable but one.
• The letters J, K, Q, V, X and Z are foreign to Welsh. The important ones to note are K, whose function is taken by C (which is always sounded "hard" in Welsh), and V, whose place is taken by a single F.
• The apparently "double" consonants Dd, Ff and Ll are letters in their own right in the Welsh alphabet, with distinctive pronunciations:
  • Dd - similar to English "Th" as pronounced in "thee" rather than "thick".
  • Ff - English F. Welsh single F sounds like English V.
  • Ll - no easy single equivalent. At the start of a syllable before a vowel (e.g. "Llandudno") resembles "Thl-" with the tongue behind the upper teeth. Towards the end of one and following a vowel (e.g. "Dduallt") more like an "-ah'ch-" with the tongue behind the lower teeth. Try breathing while making the sound, e.g. breathe out an H immediately followed by English LL, rather like "Hull" without the U.
• The vowel U on its own has a sharper sound than in English, resembling English Y.
• Welsh W is a vowel, resembling a soft English OO,as in "cool" rather than "boo!".
• Welsh Y changes depending on position. In the last syllable of a word, like English I as in "bin". Otherwise, like English U as in "but". In isolation, "Y" (or "Yr") is the definite article ("the"). There is no indefinite article ("a", "an") in Welsh.
• As in French, the presence of a circumflex accent on a vowel (e.g. "Lôn") lengthens the sound of the vowel. Circumflexes can also alter the sounds of W and Y but these combinations have been neglected by those determining which accented letters we can and can't use on the Web...

WHR Place Names, from North to South

* A hafod, literally a "summer place" is traditionally an upland farm for summer grazing, worked in conjunction with a lowland hendre (home farm) for winter grazing. The application of the term hafod to some of the placenames given here is not entirely consistent with this, as Hafod y Llyn and Hafod Garegog are not far above sea level.

** The references to coast and sea in various place names from here on reflect the fact that before the Cob was built across the mouth of Traeth Mawr, the low-lying land of the Glaslyn Estuary was covered by the sea at high tide.