Anyone know (and can explain in text form) the pronunciation of a Welsh name?
We have named our daughter Rhoswen, as we liked the name, and there’s a Welsh connection on my wife’s side, but we don’t actually know the correct pronunciation, and are afraid one day she’ll go to Wales and be mocked. The way we say it now rhymes with rosin.
Any thoughts?
The initial sound represented by rh is an unvoiced r. This sound does not exist in English, but it is found in some American Indian languages. The /r/ in English is always voiced.
Here’s how you can produce the Welsh rh: form your mouth in the position to say r, but instead just blow your breath out through it, while flapping the tongue as you do when saying regular r. It’s like a whispered r, but more strongly articulated as a flap or trill.
I believe the o vowel is probably more rounded than the o in English rosin. Is the s voiced in Welsh between vowels (sounding like a z)? Or does it remain unvoiced? Don’t forget to pronounce the w. In this word, it’s pronounced the same as English w. So it really doesn’t sound that much like rosin at all.
Try this website. It not only has written explanations, but also has links to audio files that allow you to hear how each sound in pronounced.
I’ll leave you to play around and figure out how to pronounce your daughter’s name.
The other thing about English-speaking Welsh is that they clearly pronounce each syllable. So, to my non-Welsh ear it would sound like Hrozs’wen, the apostrophe indicating a slight pause, almost as if the name was comprised of two words. Why not take a quick visit to North Wales and ask around?
FranticMad, you do realize that rubberdemon is many thousand of miles away from Wales, right? And with all due respect to my grandmother, they have a strange accent in North Wales. 
My sister’s name is Rhiannon, and we have always pronounced it ree-ann-on, even in Welsh (which is my father’s first language).
Or, you could try a phone call to an address in Wales. Maybe there’s a Chamber of Commerce type thing you could try.
(But how do you know you like the name if you don’t know how to pronounce it? Why pick a name you don’t know how to pronounce?)
Another interesting website explaining the is from http://www.omniglot.com. Check this one: Welsh (Cymraeg). Of course, the values for the letters are listed in yet another alphabet, the International Phonetic Alphabet.
hros’wen.
can you find a tape of a welsh person speaking?
that might help a bit.
Well, we like the way <i>we</i> pronounce it, and we like the way the name looks. But we realized that the way we pronounce it may not be linguistically correct. Then again, the inhabitants of Versailles (pronounced ver-sayles), LA, don’t seem to worry too much about this, so maybe we shouldn’t either.
Thanks for all the folk with the suggestions. One day we will be in Wales and will get it from the horse’s mouth, but for now, we’ll experiment a little for fun, and call her Ros in daily life for simplicity.
Rozwen. Roz, as is Wizard-of-Oz; wen, as in when.
TT
(born and grew up in Wales)