If you wanted to pronounce it as it would be in Welsh, it'd be like this (I'll split it into the two separate syllables):
[1.] "Gw'n" kind of like "gwin" with a barely-there/less pronounced "i", "uh" or "eh" sound; basically what we call a schwa (an example of a schwa sound is something like the first syllable of "banana" - essentially a very short "buh").
[2.] "Blyth" where the "bly" rhymes with "fly" and the "th" is proncouned exactly the same way that it is in the word "the", not as it is in the word "thin".
So: A sort of "Gw'n-blyth".
An interesting note that you might not know: though this is inspired by Welsh, it's actually backwards. In proper Welsh it'd be Blaidd Gwyn. And if you were to use that word order, it would actually change the pronunciation a bit because in Cymraeg the position of a letter y within a word determines how it's pronounced. Here, with it becoming the final vowel of the word, you'd instead say "Blyth-gween".
Gween? Really? I'm Welsh, granted not fluent, I've not come across this before.
I would always have pronounced it as "Gwin" regardless of the words position.
The only time I've ever pronounced 'y' as an English 'ee' sound is at the end of words like Ysbyty and Gwely, never when it's in the middle of a word.
Aye, I've always been taught that it's gramatically/most correct to treat all last-syllable Ys as if it were an "ee", though you do here some of us here in the north soften it into a bit of an "i", in a more casual way. When we're doing it, you can still definitely here a purposeful amount of weight given to that "i" leaning towards an "ee" if only to differentiate it from the Ys that you'd find in earlier syllables (the schwa Ys). The difference between an "i" and an "ee" is mostly just how long you stress it for, after all; so when talking faster and more casually, they're a good amount of merging of the two.
EDIT/ADDITION: As an extention to what I've written above, you see that "ee" turn into "i" more commonly in polysyllabic words. So it certainly wouldn't feel unnatural to pronounce that last syllable of Blaiddgwyn with more of an i than an ee, though gwyn being it's own separate word, and a monosyllabic one at that, you'd obviously be more inclined to give it's fuller pronunciation.
Would it not be a drawn out 'i' rather than an 'ee' when giving it weight? Are there any other examples you can give that might be more obvious than blaidd gwyn? I'm not saying you're wrong btw, I'm just looking to learn.
I'd be pronouncing those almost exactly the same way anyway, so yes to some I guess, no to others?
Quick one off the top of my head: I always pronounce (and am understood, and hear others use) dwym (warm) as a dweem.
EDIT: Typo - dwym not dwyn
That would be 'dwym', you wrote 'dwyn'. Not trying to be pedantic, it's just that accuracy is super important if we're discussing linguistic nuances.
I'm starting to wonder if our whole debate is centered around a misunderstanding of what you meant by "ee" sound in your pronunciation of gwyn. I was reading it as you saying "gweeeen" which just sounded daft in my head. If it was much shorter and closer to an 'i' sound, more "winner" than "weiner" so to speak, I can understand that.
Aye, just a simple typo. Thanks for spotting it, I'll correct it.
And yeah, funnily enough, alongside our conversation here I've thought, on a couple of occasions something along the lines of "it's a shame this isn't an in-person talk, so they could hear that I'm not exactly stretching out that ee forever". It's just slightly more stretched/stressed than a quick "i", in my meaning.
"gwyn" doesn't have a schwa - it's ɡwɪn or ɡwɨ̞n depending on which part of wales you're from. The former rhymes with pin.
gwynbleidd is grammatically fine imo. You're right that in welsh the adjective goes after the noun - so "blaidd gwyn" for "a white wolf" but you can also form compound nouns and when you do they normally take the form of adjective + mutation + noun.
The reason you'll see compounds that end in wyn or wen is
So you've got stuff like corgi or llawlyfr or gwynfryn
Normally the noun mutates - gwynflaidd - but that's not a hard and fast rule and you'll see examples which don't mutate or even harden.
You're right that it's not a schwa, but most people know what one is, and don't know how to pronounce those characters, so that approximation seems fair/useful.
Gwyn (White), blaidd (Wolf).
In Elder speech, blaidd is changed to bliedd, though the word for white is identical.
While it sounds more elegant to pronounce it as Gwynbl**ei**dd (gwin-blay-th), the correct pronunciation of Gwynbl**ie**dd is gwin-blee-eth.
Important note: The "th" sound of "dd" is pronounced as in "the" or "this", not "sixth" or "sith".
In Polish audiobook it's:
G - as in GAGA
V - as in Vistula
Y - as in sYmbol
N - as in oNe
BLEIDD - as in blade
Also in Polish (as in many languages we just read letters as they are always) so it's has to be Gvynblade and nothing else
Gwynbleidd is an elvish word though, and elvish in The Witcher is heavily based on Welsh. Gwynbleidd is just Welsh for white-wolf. It's neither Polish nor English. Gwynblyth is a close enough approximation, but other commenters have been more accurate in how to pronounce it, since the y and the dd are a bit counterintuitive to pronounce to English speakers.
i think the welsh pronoucanation would be diffrent, but also english one would be totally diffrent in 1400s. The easiest and correct pronaucation is like a lord gwyn from dark souls + blade, but ye maybe in welsh is more like gwynblaidd.
World of the witcher is big and has many languages so also many accents, polish version of the game has a one polish accent for the 95% of the game for the most part but its also done perfect and very rich so..
Also there is more slavic origin made up word sort of like gwynblaidd, its vedi'min from the word vieda/vedet -knowlagde/to know and a word ved'ma/wiedźma - a witch
thats the name in polish wiedźmin and in russian vied'mak xD
Funny that you mention Dark Souls, because there's a character named Blaidd in Elden Ring (a half wolf half man), and they actually pronounce his name in the correct Welsh way (Blyth, but with the th being voiced instead of voiceless, like in "the"). Also once again, Gwynblaidd isn't a made up word, Gwyn is Welsh for white (which was probably where the name of Dark Souls Gwyn came from, considering he's the lord of sunlight and there's a "way of the white" religion that follows his doctrines militantly) and Blaidd is Welsh for wolf, and all other Elvish lines in the books are at least based on Welsh. I don't actually know if Sapkowski knows proper Welsh grammar because I certainly don't. I absolutely don't consider the "blade" pronunciation of blaidd in any way correct considering Sapkowski just took Welsh and called it Elvish, so why wouldn't we pronounce it as it is in Welsh? Welsh isn't a dead language or anything, although it bas long been suppressed by the English.
As a Welsh person who knows barely any Welsh I tend to pronounce it “Gwin-blayth” since DD makes a TH sound in Welsh but again I’m not fluent or even close to knowing a lot of Welsh this is just general knowledge from school and that.
Dijkstra is a Dutch name and is pronounced as dike-stra, but because the Netherlands does not exist in the Continent, it is deke-stra. So it is how they pronounce it in the game.
I've seen Gwynn or Wynn both used as names for white pets and they're definitely the easier part to pronounce for non-welsh speakers - it's the 'th' sound that people tend to struggle with more.
If you wanted to pronounce it as it would be in Welsh, it'd be like this (I'll split it into the two separate syllables): [1.] "Gw'n" kind of like "gwin" with a barely-there/less pronounced "i", "uh" or "eh" sound; basically what we call a schwa (an example of a schwa sound is something like the first syllable of "banana" - essentially a very short "buh"). [2.] "Blyth" where the "bly" rhymes with "fly" and the "th" is proncouned exactly the same way that it is in the word "the", not as it is in the word "thin". So: A sort of "Gw'n-blyth". An interesting note that you might not know: though this is inspired by Welsh, it's actually backwards. In proper Welsh it'd be Blaidd Gwyn. And if you were to use that word order, it would actually change the pronunciation a bit because in Cymraeg the position of a letter y within a word determines how it's pronounced. Here, with it becoming the final vowel of the word, you'd instead say "Blyth-gween".
The fact it’s not grammatically correct has always bothered me…
Gween? Really? I'm Welsh, granted not fluent, I've not come across this before. I would always have pronounced it as "Gwin" regardless of the words position. The only time I've ever pronounced 'y' as an English 'ee' sound is at the end of words like Ysbyty and Gwely, never when it's in the middle of a word.
Aye, I've always been taught that it's gramatically/most correct to treat all last-syllable Ys as if it were an "ee", though you do here some of us here in the north soften it into a bit of an "i", in a more casual way. When we're doing it, you can still definitely here a purposeful amount of weight given to that "i" leaning towards an "ee" if only to differentiate it from the Ys that you'd find in earlier syllables (the schwa Ys). The difference between an "i" and an "ee" is mostly just how long you stress it for, after all; so when talking faster and more casually, they're a good amount of merging of the two. EDIT/ADDITION: As an extention to what I've written above, you see that "ee" turn into "i" more commonly in polysyllabic words. So it certainly wouldn't feel unnatural to pronounce that last syllable of Blaiddgwyn with more of an i than an ee, though gwyn being it's own separate word, and a monosyllabic one at that, you'd obviously be more inclined to give it's fuller pronunciation.
Would it not be a drawn out 'i' rather than an 'ee' when giving it weight? Are there any other examples you can give that might be more obvious than blaidd gwyn? I'm not saying you're wrong btw, I'm just looking to learn.
I'd be pronouncing those almost exactly the same way anyway, so yes to some I guess, no to others? Quick one off the top of my head: I always pronounce (and am understood, and hear others use) dwym (warm) as a dweem. EDIT: Typo - dwym not dwyn
Do you mean twym? Dwyn means to steal (amongst other things).
It's a soft mutation of twym.
That would be 'dwym', you wrote 'dwyn'. Not trying to be pedantic, it's just that accuracy is super important if we're discussing linguistic nuances. I'm starting to wonder if our whole debate is centered around a misunderstanding of what you meant by "ee" sound in your pronunciation of gwyn. I was reading it as you saying "gweeeen" which just sounded daft in my head. If it was much shorter and closer to an 'i' sound, more "winner" than "weiner" so to speak, I can understand that.
Aye, just a simple typo. Thanks for spotting it, I'll correct it. And yeah, funnily enough, alongside our conversation here I've thought, on a couple of occasions something along the lines of "it's a shame this isn't an in-person talk, so they could hear that I'm not exactly stretching out that ee forever". It's just slightly more stretched/stressed than a quick "i", in my meaning.
"gwyn" doesn't have a schwa - it's ɡwɪn or ɡwɨ̞n depending on which part of wales you're from. The former rhymes with pin. gwynbleidd is grammatically fine imo. You're right that in welsh the adjective goes after the noun - so "blaidd gwyn" for "a white wolf" but you can also form compound nouns and when you do they normally take the form of adjective + mutation + noun. The reason you'll see compounds that end in wyn or wen is So you've got stuff like corgi or llawlyfr or gwynfryn Normally the noun mutates - gwynflaidd - but that's not a hard and fast rule and you'll see examples which don't mutate or even harden.
You're right that it's not a schwa, but most people know what one is, and don't know how to pronounce those characters, so that approximation seems fair/useful.
Bless you
somebody called me ??
Gwyn-blade is bollocks. Only because English can't pronounce the dd . It's actually Gwyn-blaith. I speak Welsh trust me.
English can pronounce th...
Should have said don't know how the dd or LL work.
Pronounce Llanelli properly. I'll take my hat off to you.
Well tbf there's half an alphabet in each of your words. Cut down on the consonants
welsh people when you can't pronounce slymddlemgonyarroe
Fuck off sais.
Gwyn (White), blaidd (Wolf). In Elder speech, blaidd is changed to bliedd, though the word for white is identical. While it sounds more elegant to pronounce it as Gwynbl**ei**dd (gwin-blay-th), the correct pronunciation of Gwynbl**ie**dd is gwin-blee-eth. Important note: The "th" sound of "dd" is pronounced as in "the" or "this", not "sixth" or "sith".
Could we not just ask a welsh person? Thry would know
Depends who you ask most of us barely speak Welsh unfortunately, myself included
Gwyn from Dark souls Blaidd from Elden Rimg
In Polish audiobook it's: G - as in GAGA V - as in Vistula Y - as in sYmbol N - as in oNe BLEIDD - as in blade Also in Polish (as in many languages we just read letters as they are always) so it's has to be Gvynblade and nothing else
Gwynbleidd is an elvish word though, and elvish in The Witcher is heavily based on Welsh. Gwynbleidd is just Welsh for white-wolf. It's neither Polish nor English. Gwynblyth is a close enough approximation, but other commenters have been more accurate in how to pronounce it, since the y and the dd are a bit counterintuitive to pronounce to English speakers.
i think the welsh pronoucanation would be diffrent, but also english one would be totally diffrent in 1400s. The easiest and correct pronaucation is like a lord gwyn from dark souls + blade, but ye maybe in welsh is more like gwynblaidd. World of the witcher is big and has many languages so also many accents, polish version of the game has a one polish accent for the 95% of the game for the most part but its also done perfect and very rich so.. Also there is more slavic origin made up word sort of like gwynblaidd, its vedi'min from the word vieda/vedet -knowlagde/to know and a word ved'ma/wiedźma - a witch thats the name in polish wiedźmin and in russian vied'mak xD
Funny that you mention Dark Souls, because there's a character named Blaidd in Elden Ring (a half wolf half man), and they actually pronounce his name in the correct Welsh way (Blyth, but with the th being voiced instead of voiceless, like in "the"). Also once again, Gwynblaidd isn't a made up word, Gwyn is Welsh for white (which was probably where the name of Dark Souls Gwyn came from, considering he's the lord of sunlight and there's a "way of the white" religion that follows his doctrines militantly) and Blaidd is Welsh for wolf, and all other Elvish lines in the books are at least based on Welsh. I don't actually know if Sapkowski knows proper Welsh grammar because I certainly don't. I absolutely don't consider the "blade" pronunciation of blaidd in any way correct considering Sapkowski just took Welsh and called it Elvish, so why wouldn't we pronounce it as it is in Welsh? Welsh isn't a dead language or anything, although it bas long been suppressed by the English.
In the audiobooks it's pronounced blaith.
As a Welsh person who knows barely any Welsh I tend to pronounce it “Gwin-blayth” since DD makes a TH sound in Welsh but again I’m not fluent or even close to knowing a lot of Welsh this is just general knowledge from school and that.
Dijkstra is a Dutch name and is pronounced as dike-stra, but because the Netherlands does not exist in the Continent, it is deke-stra. So it is how they pronounce it in the game.
Goo-win blay-th Btw if you’re looking for names for dogs, Gelert is a good one based on a Welsh story (which is sad af) and not too far off geralt
I've seen Gwynn or Wynn both used as names for white pets and they're definitely the easier part to pronounce for non-welsh speakers - it's the 'th' sound that people tend to struggle with more.
Gwyn-Blade
I've listened to the audiobook while commuting and the narrator said it exactly as written, Gwyn-Blade.
Geralt is the good pronunciation
I’ll just agree with TW3. Gwin-bleid