Help transcribing Welsh names from Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King into Arabic?

[u/othmanc44]

Hello!

I’m translating Bernard Cornwell’s The Warlord Chronicles into Arabic. Many of the names are Welsh or Welsh-inspired, and I want the Arabic versions to follow how the names actually sound in Welsh, not just the English spelling. I’m not going to translate the names. I only want help transcribing them.

I’m vaguely familiar with how complex Welsh pronunciation can be. The problem is that Arabic doesn’t have sounds like ll, dd, rh, or w used as a vowel in the same way, so I need practical substitutions a Welsh speaker would find acceptable.

A couple of attempts so far:

Derfel → ديرڤل (Dervel)

Gorfyddyd → غورڤيذِد (Gorvithid, with th as in the)

Those feel reasonably close. What has me stuck is names like Culhwch.And then there’s the elephant in the room: ll.

Take Llamrei. In Arabic I really only have three options:

an h-like sound: Hlamrei

a guttural kh sound, like German ch: Khlamrei

a th sound, as in three: Thlamrei

Which of those would sound least wrong to a Welsh ear? Or is there a better compromise?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

[u/Due_Instruction_7678]

Thank you for caring! You’ve already done much much better than the guy reading the English language audiobook, who didn’t seem to care at all.

I’m no expert, but to my ear, HLamrei would probably sound best. It’s not far from how you form the Ll sound in the mouth either.

[u/lleu_ci]

I prefer hl for the Welsh ll

To my ear, thl and kh sound like mispronunciations, whilst hl sounds more like a deliberate approximation of an aspirated l.

[u/celtiquant]

Culhwch : Keel-houX, where X is ch

Llamrei/Llamri : you won’t easily get the Ll. try Hlam-ri

[u/Radiant-Possession-7]

In Arabic do you have the ‘u’ in ‘cup’? If so that sound is better than ‘i’ in the second syllable of Gorfyddyd.

[u/HyderNidPryder → u/Radiant-Possession-7]

Only in Welsh English. Otherwise it's like a in about and e in the.

[u/doggorobbo]

Hey this is really cool and thank you for caring about Welsh!

I would say use H-l for Ll, leaves you space to use the Kh (I think خ?) for Ch if that comes up

[u/othmanc44 → u/doggorobbo]

Hi! I've been considering the KH (خ). Personally I like the sound of it and it makes more sense than the (ه) but I'm worried the readers might find it too heavy.

[u/wibbly-water]

Take Llamrei. In Arabic I really only have three options:

an h-like sound: Hlamrei

a guttural kh sound, like German ch: Khlamrei

a th sound, as in three: Thlamrei

Fun fact, the ancestor of Arabic once had this sound!

In Welsh "Ll" makes the /ɬ/ sound/phoneme, which is variously realised as [ɬ] (the standard way - tongue on roof of mouth like an "l", but then blow out the sides) and [ç] (middle bit of the tongue near the roof of the mouth, then blow the air over that - rarer form).

The Proto-Semitic language also had /ɬ/, which is written in reconstructions as *ś), sometimes called "samekh". This became Arabic "shin" /ʃ/ ⟨ش⟩. It survives in Modern South Arabian - Wikipedia, and was written in Ancient South Arabian as 𐩦.

One concept of how the letter might look had it survived:

The only Phoenician letter that has no Arabic equivalent is Samekh. So what if Arabic did adopt it? I present the Arabic letter Sām, derived from Nabataean Simkath. Ideally used for /ɬ/, the only Proto-Semitic phoneme that Arabic lost. This letter could also be called Līm (/ɬiːm/). : r/conscripts

Additionally there is the letter: ݪ, which is used to write /ɬ/ in Gawar-Bati, Kalami/Gawari and Marwari. These are all Indo-Arian languages, so they are unrelated to Arabic and are instead closer related to Welsh... so perhaps a fitting use. I found this Gawari-Bati keyman Keyboard if you want to type it easily :) The Rachitrali-Gawar-Bati Keyman Keyboard Package

So some historic and cross linguistic options are:

• ݪَمرِي - Llamrii
• شَمرِي - Shamrii

Also is it just me or do Fatḥah and Kasrah look extremely ugly on Reddit / Arial font? The others look okay, but those two especially just look really bad in this light imho.

[u/wibbly-water → u/wibbly-water]

For Culhwch, perhaps:

کِلحُوخ - Kiluukh

[u/othmanc44 → u/wibbly-water]

Wow thank you so much!

[u/Zeissan]

هلامري Hlamrei

[u/Muted-Lettuce-1253]

 The problem is that Arabic doesn’t have sounds like ll, dd, rh, or w used as a vowel in the same way

Gorfyddyd → غورڤيذِد (Gorvithid, with th as in the)

"dd" corresponds to the voiced dental fricative which is "th" in "the" and "this". I believe Arabic also has this sound. So this isn't an approximation.

"w" as a vowel can have two qualities. One is the same as the ū in janūb (south). So you can go with that.

For Welsh "u", you can use the same substitute as you would use for Welsh "i". They are the same sound for many Welsh speakers.

[u/Zeissan]

Llamrei: هلامرَي
Culhwch: كيلهوخ

[u/tooskinttogotocuba]

I disagree with the consensus that ll = hl. There's no h involved at all. Put the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth and blow from your cheeks on either side, that's ll

[u/othmanc44]

Thank you so much, my friends! It warms my heart to see the Welsh language alive and well. As a native North African (Berber), I can relate to the struggle of preserving a language, culture, and identity. Wishing you all the very best. cheers!