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     Welsh is a fascinating language belonging to the Celtic language family. It has numerous interesting features that provide ample inspiration for the aspiring conlanger.

     1) Phonology:

     Welsh has a few distinctive sounds not found in common English:

• The voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ] which came from initial [l].
• The voiceless alveolar trill [r̥], which comes from historic initial [r].
• The voiceless uvular fricative [χ].
• The voiceless nasals [m̥], [n̥], and [ŋ̊], which historically stems from frequent contact of the phonemes [mp], [nt], and [nk]. They are spelled <mh>, <nh>, and <ngh> respectively.

     2) Consonant Mutations:

     Welsh features three main mutations that affect initial consonants:

• Soft Mutation:
  • P -> B
  • B -> F
  • T -> D
  • D -> DD
  • C -> G
  • G -> ø
  • M -> F
  • Ll -> L
  • Rh -> R
• Aspirate Mutation:
  • P -> PH
  • T -> TH
  • C -> CH
• Nasal Mutation:
  • P -> Mh
  • B ->M
  • T -> Nh
  • D -> N
  • C -> Ngh
  • G -> Ng

      3) Formation of Tenses:

     The Past Perfect tense in Welsh is formed through the adverb “wedi” meaning “after”. Thus, the sentence “He has spoken Welsh.” is literally “He is after speaking Welsh.”

     The Present tense is formed from the locative “in”, such that the sentence “He is speaking Welsh.” would literally be “He is in speaking Welsh.”

     The basic Future tense is formed from the phrase “yn mynd i”. Therefore, “He is going to speak Welsh” is literally “He is in going to speak Welsh.”

     4) Formation of Plurals:

     Plurality can be marked in Welsh through three main paths:

• Vowel change, as in bardd -> beirdd (bard).

• Addition of a suffix, as in cath -> cathod (cat).

• Both vowel change and a suffix, such as gwlad -> gwledydd.

      5) Construct State:

     As in some Afro-Asiatic languages, Welsh has a “Construct State”, in which a possessed noun takes a different form from its unpossessed counterpart. In Welsh, this difference is reified through the lack of the definite article in the possessed noun:

• Cath y dyn is translated as “The man’s cat.”, but is literally “Cat the man.”

     6) Welsh Word Order:

     Like many Afro-Asiatic languages, Welsh has Verb-Subject-Object word order.

     In addition, adjectives come before nouns, and possessors come after that which is possessed. This marks the language as largely head-initial, which means core semantic information generally comes before peripheral details.

     7) Prepositional Pronouns:

   A few prepositions in Welsh conjugate with their noun objects to produce personal forms. This can be shown in Literary Welsh since the phrase for “to have something” uses the preposition “with”. The sentence, “I have a book.” would be literally translated as “A book is with me.” A few personal forms are as follows:

•      Y mae castell gennyf i = I have a castle (There is a castle with me) 
•      Y mae castell gennyt ti = You have a castle (There is a castle with you) 
•      Y mae castell ganddi hi = She has a castle (There is a castle with her) 

     8) Lack of Indefinite Articles:

     Welsh lacks a set of indefinite articles (the English “a(n)”), but has acquired the definite article “y(r)”. This feature provides an interesting middle ground between completely lacking articles in a language, and having both definite and indefinite sets.

     I hope you’ve enjoyed learning some of the interesting features of Welsh, and that this has provided some inspiration for your next (or current) conlanging project!