The Welsh alphabet contains 28 letters, seven of which are vowels. The letters are (Vowels in bold):

a, b, c, ch, d, dd, e, f, ff, g, ng, h, i, l, ll, m, n, o, p, ph, r, rh, s, t, th, u, w, y.

The letter "J" is slowly coming into the Welsh language, although many purists transliterate the letter as "si", as in Siapan for Japan.

While the letters ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, th are each written with two symbols (they are technically called digraphs), they are all considered to be single letters. This means, for example that Llanelli (a town in South Wales) has only 6 letters when read in Welsh, compared to 8 letters in English. Consequently, they each take up only a single space in Welsh crosswords. This provides contention for Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch's claim to be the longest placename in Britain, having 58 letters, whereas in Welsh it only contains 51 letters.

Sorting is done in correspondence with the alphabet. For example, la comes before ly, which comes before lla, which comes before ma.

See also

• alphabet
• Welsh language