THE FORCE OF THE LETTERS—LIST OF PRIMITIVE WORDS—CHARACTER OF THE
LANGUAGE AND OF THE POETRY.
It is supposed, that there were anciently, in the Welsh or British
language, {0} no less than thirty-six letters, sixteen of which were
radicals, that expressed the primary sounds; and the rest, modulations or
dependents on them. For each of these, it is probable that there was
formerly a simple appropriate character; but, since the invention of
printing, and the introduction of Roman letters, it has been necessary,
for want of a sufficient variety of cast for the purpose, to adopt two,
and in one instance even three, of those letters, to express one sound or
character, by which much of the simplicity and beauty of the proper
alphabet has been lost.
The present printed books contain only twenty-seven characters: A, B, C,
Ch, D, Dd, E, F, Ff, G, Ng, H, I, L, Ll, M, N, O, P, Ph, R, S, T, Th, U,
W, and Y; having neither J, K, X, nor Z. C answers the purpose of K,
when joined with W or Q; and when placed with S, of X. It is said that Z
is used in the Armorican language, which is a dialect of this, but the
Welsh disown it.
No letter has any variation of sound, except the accented vowels â, ê, î,
ô, û, ŵ, ŷ, which are lengthened, or otherwise, according to the power of
the accent, and all are pronounced, as there are no mutes.
A has the same sound as the English open _a_ in the word _bard_.