'Y Gogleddwynt a'r Haul': early transcriptions of Welsh in Le Maître Phonétique. (1st December 2020) - Awbery, G. M.
A traditional fable 'The North Wind and the Sun' was used for many years in the journal Le Maître Phonétique as a short sample text to illustrate the phonetic characteristics of a range of different languages, and as part of this activity several different Welsh versions of the fable were published. One, which reflects a speaker with a northern accent speaking in a formal register, appeared as early as 1911 and then again, slightly modified, in 1912 and 1949. Two further versions, reflecting informal, dialect usage in the Bala district and in Aber- porth in Cardiganshire, appeared in 1926. This paper explores what light these transcriptions shed on the spoken language, and asks how the phoneticians who made them came to be involved.