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Welsh orthography uses 29 letters (including eight digraphs) of the Latin script to write native Welsh words as well as established loanwords.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Yr Wyddor Gymraeg/The Welsh Alphabet )〕 The acute accent ((ウェールズ語:acen ddyrchafedig)), the grave accent ((ウェールズ語:acen ddisgynedig)), the circumflex ((ウェールズ語:acen grom/to bach/hirnod)) and the diaeresis mark ((ウェールズ語:didolnod)) are also used on vowels, but accented letters are not regarded as part of the alphabet. The letter ''j'' was only relatively recently accepted into Welsh orthography for those words borrowed from English in which the sound is retained in Welsh, even where that sound is not represented by ''j'' in English spelling, as in ''garej'' ("garage") and ''ffrij'' ("fridge"). Older borrowings of English words containing resulted in the sound being pronounced and spelt in various other ways, resulting in occasional doublets such as ''Siapan ''and ''Japan'' ("Japan"). The letters ''k'', ''q'', ''v'', ''x'' and ''z'' are sometimes used in technical terms, like ''kilogram'', ''volt'', ''xeroser'' and ''zero'', but in all cases can be, and often are, replaced by Welsh letters: ''cilogram'', ''folt'', ''seroser'' and ''sero.''〔Thomas, Peter Wynn (1996) ''Gramadeg y Gymraeg.'' Cardiff: University of Wales Press: 757.〕 Nevertheless, in the Welsh colony in Patagonia, ''v'' is used generally to represent the sound .〔 ==History== The earliest samples of written Welsh date from the 6th century and are in the Latin alphabet (see Old Welsh). The orthography differs from that of modern Welsh particularly in the use of ''p'', ''t'' and ''c'' to represent the voiced plosives in the middle and at the end of words. Similarly, the voiced fricatives were written with ''b'' and ''d''.〔Watkins, T. Arwyn (1993) "Welsh" in Ball, Martin J. with Fife, James (Eds) ''The Celtic Languages.'' London/New York: Routledge: 289-348.〕 By the Middle Welsh period, this had given way to much variability: although ''b'', ''d'' and ''g'' were now used to represent , these sounds were also often written as in Old Welsh, while could be denoted by ''u'', ''v'', ''f'' or ''w''. In earlier manuscripts, moreover, fricatives were often not distinguished from plosives (e.g. ''t'' for , the sound now written with ''th'').〔Evans, Simon D. (1964) ''A Grammar of Middle Welsh.'' Dublin: ColourBooks Ltd.〕 The grapheme ''k'' was also used more commonly than in the modern alphabet, particularly before front vowels.〔 The disuse of this letter is at least partly due to the publication of William Morgan's Welsh Bible, whose English printers, with type letter frequencies set for English and Latin, did not have enough ''k'' letters in their type cases to spell every sound as ''k'', so the order went "''C for K, because the printers have not so many as the Welsh requireth''";〔(English and Welsh ), an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien〕 this was not liked at the time, but has become standard usage. In 1928 a committee chaired by Sir John Morris-Jones standardised the orthography of modern Welsh. In 1987, a committee chaired by Professor Stephen J. Williams made further small changes. The conventions established by these committees are not adhered to by all modern writers.〔Thomas, Peter Wynn (1996) ''Gramadeg y Gymraeg.'' Cardiff: University of Wales Press: 749.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Welsh orthography」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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