short: tâl ‘pay’, dăl ‘hold’, cân ‘song’, căn ‘white’; câr ‘relative’, căr ‘car’.
Each of these consonants may be etymologically single or double. Dăl is from *dalg- § 110 ii (2), so that the final l represents two root consonants. In O. and Ml. W. final n and r when double in origin were doubled in writing, as in penn, ‘head’, Irish cenn, in other cases of course remaining single as in hēn ‘old’, Irish sen; thus the principle that the vowel is short before two consonants, long before one, applied. The final consonant is now written single even in words like pen, and only doubled when a syllable is added, as in pennaf, cf. Eng. sin (O. E. sinn) but sinner (though even medial ‑nn- is now sounded ‑n- in Eng.). It is therefore necessary now to distinguish between long and short vowels in these words by marking the vowels themselves.
☞In a monosyllable, a long vowel followed by l, n or r is circumflexed; thus, tâl ‘pay’, cân, ‘song’, dôr ‘door’, dêl ‘may come’, hŷn ‘older’. But i and u need not be circumflexed, since they are always long before these consonants, except in prin, and in (= Ml. W. ynn ‘to us’), and a few words from English as pĭn, bĭl. The common words dȳn, hēn, ōl are seldom circumflexed.
Ml. W. ‑nn is still written in some words, e.g. in onn ‘ash’ pl. ɥnn, as in the names Llwyn Onn, Llwyn Ynn. Doubling the consonant is preferable to marking the vowel when it is desired to avoid ambiguity, as in cann ‘white’, a yrr ‘drives’. It is not sounded double now when final; but the consonant is distinctly longer e.g. in pĕn than in hēn. In Corn., penn became pedn.
Note. The a is long in tâl ‘forehead, front, end’, and was circumflexed down to the latter part of the 18th cent.; see D.D. s.v., g. 68. The l is etymologically single, as is seen in the Gaulish name Cassitalos. In the spoken language the word survives only in place-names, and is sounded short in such a name as Tàl-y-bónt because this has become an improper compound accented on the ultima, § 46 iii, so that its first element has only a secondary accent, § 49. When the principal accent falls on it, it is long, as in Trwyn-y-tâl near the Rivals. Tegig̃il o tâl, Edeirnaun, Iâl b.b. 74 ‘Tegeingl to its end, Edeirnawn, [and] Yale.’ The rhyme with Iâl shows the quantity of tâl.
- Y fun araf, fain, eirian,
- A’r tâl fal yr aur mâl mân.—D.G. 330.
‘The calm, slender, bright girl, with the head like finely milled gold.’
v. When the word ends in ll the quantity varies. In N. W. it is short in all such words except ōll, hōll; in S. W. it is long, except in găll ‘can’, dŭll ‘manner’, mw̆ll ‘sultry’, cy̆ll ‘loses’, and possibly some others.
