ny
y d
m d
gwawch !
o
r
y
w
g
bychan
n
a
i
t c
i
s e
r
e n
P
E
N
T
W
R
g as r i
w g d g
a e
nnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiffffffffffffffffffffffffffeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooggg
annisgwyliadwy
What's all this then ? ny y d m d gwawch ! o r y w g bychan n a i t c i s e r e n P E N T W R g as r i w g d g a e nnnnnnnnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiffffffffffffffffffffffffffeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooggg annisgwyliadwy
0 Comments
Here's an interview/cyfweliad with a band I've never heard of called Root Lucies ... in remarkably, bright sunshine. You all know the advantages of listening to this sort of thing ... you can listen to bits over and over, you can stop and look things up, you can turn the volume up and up and up, you can have a lie down with a cold compress on your bonce .... the ball's in your court..... or not, of course. I can only find one song of theirs on youtube, though there is another one in existence ( Dawnsio ar Mars) ...so dyna ni .... Gadael Fory ... a nawr ... byw gwir !
Last time I was talking about learning a language, especially the difficulties. When I was in Wales recently, I had quite a few conversations with people who, in various ways, had tried and failed to learn Welsh ... basically, they had given up. I wasn't at all surprised. I often find almost brand-new Welsh dictionaries in charity shops ... I'm pretty sure each one represents somebody who has bought a dictionary and a book or some CDs .... tried Welsh for a while and just gone under, given up. In St Asaph Cathedral , I got talking to a woman who has been learning Welsh for 12 years, and she admitted that she had got almost nowhere. She had great difficulty remembering the words, she had tried all sorts of courses and books etc , she found the pronunciation very hard ..... currently she was trying a course where you just learn to say words.... never mind what they mean .... you just learn to speak the words. At least she's still trying. Sheltering from the rain in a shop, I got talking to the shopkeeper. He's English, and his wife is a Welsh speaker .... despite setting out to learn Welsh, he very quickly packed it in. Basically, it was too much for him. Another day I was talking to a woman in a deserted library ...we were the only two "customers" ..... she had tried several times to learn some basic Welsh, and was a serial "giver-upper." Although she really wanted to learn, it seemed to be an almost impossible mountain for her to climb. I get the impression that, were there a little bell that rang every time somebody gave up learning Welsh, it would be a pretty noisy world out there. Truthfully, I have no answer to this. I know from experience that learning to read Welsh to a reasonable standard, as I now can, takes about 5x as long as it does to reach the same level in French or Spanish. Maybe more. I know that learning to listen to and understand spoken Welsh is extremely tough ... again, French and Spanish are many times easier. So how come I've stuck with it ? Two factors I think ... Well, I'm a terrible bighead, so I think I can do anything. Also, I'm attracted to mysterious things ... and Welsh is certainly that. But ... I don't think anyone really has a clue about how to keep Welsh as a living language ... Just now on the radio they've had a small choir singing Calon Lan .... it was excellent, mainly because it was a small choir so you could hear all the words ... with big choirs the words get drowned out. |
Author I'm 376 years old,104 metres tall and own 54 pairs of binoculars. Apart from that, I'm pretty normal. Archives
October 2019
|