If announcements are prerecorded why not get them right?

[6Gman]

I was at Wolverhampton yesterday as the Aberystwyth/Pwllheli train was arriving.

The announcements for some of the Welsh stations were excrutiating.

Llwyngwril and Abererch in particular.

Since they are pre-recorded why not employ somebody who can get them (even approximately) right ?

 

[swtandgw]

I was at Wolverhampton yesterday as the Aberystwyth/Pwllheli train was arriving.

The announcements for some of the Welsh stations were excrutiating.

Llwyngwril and Abererch in particular.

Since they are pre-recorded why not employ somebody who can get them (even approximately) right ?

Because Welsh contains phonemes that don't exist in English, especially the double-L, which uses a sound that's extremely uncommon in European languages, but not really that difficult to master if you can get the tongue placement correct.

 

[johnnychips]

^ then why not get a Welsh speaker to do it?

 

[Ken H]

Because Welsh contains phonemes that don't exist in English, especially the double-L, which uses a sound that's extremely uncommon in European languages, but not really that difficult to master if you can get the tongue placement correct.

Welsh is phonetic - as long as you know what the letters are to be pronounced as its easy
bear in mind Y is a vowel pronounced like the e in easy
and ll and ff are really letters in their own right
ll as in llandudno. ff is pronounced like an english f. a single f is pronounced like v

So it should be possible for an English person, with a little training, to pronounce Welsh reasonably accurately.

 

[Parallel]

^ then why not get a Welsh speaker to do it?

Probably cost, it would sound a bit weird having a Welsh speaker at Wolverhampton, as they would have to announce all trains. Also, just the difficult Welsh stations in a different voice would sound odd.

Transport for Wales stations are better, and the stations actually in Wales have a native Welsh speaker as well as the English voice. I've attached two recordings below, one of the Cambrian lines from Shrewsbury which is English only (but a different voice to Wolverhampton) and one of the Welsh speaker from Machynlleth.

 

[6Gman]

Probably cost, it would sound a bit weird having a Welsh speaker at Wolverhampton, as they would have to announce all trains. Also, just the difficult Welsh stations in a different voice would sound odd.

Transport for Wales stations are better, and the stations actually in Wales have a native Welsh speaker as well as the English voice. I've attached two recordings below, one of the Cambrian lines from Shrewsbury which is English only (but a different voice to Wolverhampton) and one of the Welsh speaker from Machynlleth.

Er, most Welsh speakers can also manage English pretty well too ...

Huw Edwards seems able to match both quite handily.

(I don't think anyone is suggesting bilingual announcements at Wolverhampton - just that it would be nice not to have the names mangled.)

 

[Parallel]

Er, most Welsh speakers can also manage English pretty well too ...

Huw Edwards seems able to match both quite handily.

(I don't think anyone is suggesting bilingual announcements at Wolverhampton - just that it would be nice not to have the names mangled.)

Really the existing voice just needs to re-record a ‘corrected’ version...

 

[Ken H]

These announcements are made by gluing lots of short audio files together. So each station name will be a small file. How hard is it to coach an announcer to say a Welsh place name, record it when he has got it right, then go onto the next one?
But then he will get Shrewsbury wrong!

 

[swtandgw]

Welsh is phonetic - as long as you know what the letters are to be pronounced as its easy
bear in mind Y is a vowel pronounced like the e in easy
and ll and ff are really letters in their own right
ll as in llandudno. ff is pronounced like an english f. a single f is pronounced like v

So it should be possible for an English person, with a little training, to pronounce Welsh reasonably accurately.

I myself can do it. The double-L was rather tricky at first, but got better after a few attempts.

 

[mmh]

I was at Wolverhampton yesterday as the Aberystwyth/Pwllheli train was arriving.

The announcements for some of the Welsh stations were excrutiating.

Llwyngwril and Abererch in particular.

Since they are pre-recorded why not employ somebody who can get them (even approximately) right ?

Or even get them consistently wrong, e.g. 175s which pronounce (or did Llandudno and Llandudno Junction differently!

 

[mmh]

Welsh is phonetic - as long as you know what the letters are to be pronounced as its easy

bear in mind Y is a vowel pronounced like the e in easy

and ll and ff are really letters in their own right

ll as in llandudno. ff is pronounced like an english f. a single f is pronounced like v



So it should be possible for an English person, with a little training, to pronounce Welsh reasonably accurately.

It's a little more complicated than that, Welsh is mostly phonetic but that doesn't mean every letter is always pronounced the same way, it can depend on context - the letters surrounding (or not) a particular letter.



Your example of Y is a perfect example. It's not always the equivalent of "ee" (probably more often than not it isn't)



It can be "uh", "i" as in "bin" in English, or "ee".



For example



Ysbyty (hospital) = uh-sbuh-tee

Y (the) = uh

Dyffryn (valley) = duff-rin



Bryn (hill, or common Welsh name everyone knows how to pronounce) = brin, not breen



Then there's when a vowel combines with another, e.g. the "wy" in Dwygyfylchi. Which is completely different to the "wy" in "Conwy", where the W acts as a consonant, not a vowel.



Welsh is easy to pronounce, you don't particularly need to learn any arcane rules, but you do need experience of letter combination sounds, and put the strange "vowels are A, E, I, O, U" thing we're all taught about English out of your head. (Which doesn't even work in English!)

 

[dosxuk]

The announcements for "Hoveton (& Wroxham)" and "Wymondham" used to be similarly mangled over in Norfolk too.

 

[pdeaves]

The announcements for "Hoveton (& Wroxham)" and "Wymondham" used to be similarly mangled over in Norfolk too.

Out of interest, how should they be pronounced? The second is, I understand, "Wind'm" and it looks like one of those places that isn't pronounced as it looks. I was unaware that Hoveton could have a different pronunciation.

 

[tommy2215]

There's no one in the country who'd be able to read all 2,500 odd stations and pronounce every single one of them perfectly.

 

[Rockhopper]

They have a synthesised system on the Robin Hood Line, some of the station names are almost unintelligible and even the regularly repeated 3 S's announcement is difficult to understand in places. I noticed people on the platform laughing at it the other day as the voice attempted to say "transport" and failed miserably.

 

[krus_aragon]

bear in mind Y is a vowel pronounced like the e in easy

Not always. The sound of the letter 'y' changes depending on whether it's in the stressed syllable or not. When stressed, is sounds like an English 'uh', when unstressed it's more like 'ee'.

For most words, the penultimate syllable is stressed/emphasised. Example: "mynydd" (mountain) is pronounced 'mun-eeth'.

Exceptions are loan words from other languages, or monosyllabic words where there's no clear pattern. The definitive article "y" (the) is considered to be stressed, so sounds like an 'uh' instead of an 'ee'. An example in my area that catches a lot of people out is Betws-y-Coed. It's three hyphenated words, so should sound like 'Bet-oos-uh-coy'd', not 'Bet-oos-ee-coy'd'.

(The other six vowels' stressed and destressed forms sound far more similar to each other. They're effectively long and short versions of the same sound, and don't cause the same amount of trouble.)

 

[DarloRich]

Since they are pre-recorded why not employ somebody who can get them (even approximately) right

are they not computer generated rather than recorded? Is it even possible to program a computer to understand the structure and composition of the Welsh language

The announcements for some of the Welsh stations were excrutiating.

Personally I would just announce them in English and not bother with Welsh at all.

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Personally I would just announce them in English and not bother with Welsh at all.

Think the point that 6Gman was making was the pronunciation of Welsh place names where no English equivalent is ever used, the examples given are Llwyngwril and Abererch (unlike for example Caergybi/Holyhead)

 

[DarloRich]

Think the point that 6Gman was making was the pronunciation of Welsh place names where no English equivalent is ever used, the examples given are Llwyngwril and Abererch (unlike for example Caergybi/Holyhead)

As an English speaker I have no idea how Llwyngwril should be pronounced. It just looks like a jumble of letters!

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

As an English speaker I have no idea how Llwyngwril should be pronounced. It just looks like a jumble of letters!

Personally that wouldn't bother me in the slightest, I feel exactly the same about Polish names!....but I do agree with the original assertion that station announcers could - and should - do much better. I have been similarly surprised disappointed at Wolverhampton.

 

[DarloRich]

Personally that wouldn't bother me in the slightest, I feel exactly the same about Polish names!....but I do agree with the original assertion that station announcers could - and should - do much better. I have been similarly surprised disappointed at Wolverhampton.

I don't disagree. However if we cant do Welsh properly should we even try? I wonder if anyone whop speaks Welsh has even been consulted!

 

[ashkeba]

As an English speaker I have no idea how Llwyngwril should be pronounced. It just looks like a jumble of letters!

As @6Gman has already pointed out, being an English speaker doesn't prevent someone being a Welsh speaker. I think you meant something like "as a Welsh non-speaker"...

I was expecting this thread to be about the "radio edit" announcements on some lines which say "This is the [EXPLETIVE] service to Peterborough..." with the rude bit silenced.

 

[krus_aragon]

are they not computer generated rather than recorded? Is it even possible to program a computer to understand the structure and composition of the Welsh language

Definitely. It is done for English, which is a far more (grammatically) complex language. Simple versions of English text-to-speech could be done on a BBC Micro back in the 1980s. The trouble that Welsh has is that, as a minority language, many consider the market share too small to bother with.

Here's a modern-day project to build a freely-available soundbank for text-to-speech and voice recognition (think Alexa, Cortana, Echo, etc) run by Mozilla. Welsh was one of the languages they started the project with in 2018.

 

[6Gman]

Personally I would just announce them in English and not bother with Welsh at all.

Er, what is the English for Llwyngwril?

The announcements were in English; it's the pronunciation of the names that was mangled.

 

[6Gman]

I don't disagree. However if we cant do Welsh properly should we even try? I wonder if anyone whop speaks Welsh has even been consulted!

Or we could just try harder?

In any event how can you announce a train for Pwllheli at Wolverhampton without attempting Welsh place names?

"This is the 16.40 to a place in Wales calling at Shrewsbury, Welshpool, Newtown and some other places including Fairbourne and Barmouth" ?

 

[DarloRich]

Er, what is the English for Llwyngwril?

The announcements were in English; it's the pronunciation of the names that was mangled.

Or we could just try harder?

In any event how can you announce a train for Pwllheli at Wolverhampton without attempting Welsh place names?

"This is the 16.40 to a place in Wales calling at Shrewsbury, Welshpool, Newtown and some other places including Fairbourne and Barmouth" ?

No idea. I cant speak Welsh and don't understand how the word sounds are produced from the given letters. I bet the vast majority of the people in our country have no idea how Welsh works. Personally I would just use the English names. To try to use the Welsh ones would just be embarrassing. If the place referred to has no English name then the best you are going to get is a mangled attempt: Th Wyn Gril.

Like i said: I wonder if anyone who CAN speak Welsh was consulted when producing the announcements. The sensible approach ( if it is that much of an issue) would be to provide a phonetic English list to be read from.

 

[Bletchleyite]

While ATOS Annie saying "LandUdno" grates, that is probably the prevailing pronunciation in most of the North West.

Similarly you'll commonly get a pronunciation like "Pwthelli" - is that what she says?

 

[mmh]

Ah, threads about Welsh always trigger the trolling gland in someone it seems!

Can I have a second class return from Leigh to Gillingham, please?

 

[option]

Alcester on the CrossCity...

 

[Llanigraham]

Personally I would just announce them in English and not bother with Welsh at all.

That wouldn't work with the 2 places mentioned in the opening post as that is the only name for those stations. They are not and never have been given an english name.

I don't disagree. However if we cant do Welsh properly should we even try? I wonder if anyone whop speaks Welsh has even been consulted!

So what do you propose they do?