Seeing as there are hardly any Welsh films available, we have to find other ways of listening to Welsh ... and here's a few interviews.... the first one is singer El Parisa inerviewing herself more or less, the 2nd one is a real interview with her and the 3rd one is an interview with presenter Amanda Protheroe-Thomas .... gdfhnfjgvj,g I hope you found those interesting ... and educational ! Now here's Poppies with the excellent Cam .......
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If you are new to this,you might want to read the previous post first, in which I have written a whole load of strategies for looking up Welsh words in the dictionary. Once you have ploughed through that lot, you're in with a chance ( albeit a slim one) of working out what some of the words in this article mean ... and good luck to all of you. But first, a little anecdote about a word which was hard to unravel because it doesn't really fit into any of those categories..... "Rarglwydd, newydd farw ma' hi" Well, it took a good while to work out what Rarglwydd meant. It always seemed to occur at the start of sentences, and I guessed it was some sort of expletive or exclamation. I tried to guess what it might actually be, and looked up my guesses on the English-Welsh side, and after a lot of failed tries, I wondered if it might be "God!!!" Most dictionaries just give God = Duw, but I found that Lord = arglwydd after al ot of mucking about. .... and Bob was my Uncle at last. So, "Rarglwydd" is actually "Yr Arglwydd"... " The Lord" .... what's happened id, they've fused the Yr with arglwydd and then dropped the Y ..... bloody typical I say. Still, I did solve it in the end. So the moral of that is..... a difficult-to-unravel word could have a mixture of several of those pitfalls listed in the previous post. What little devils those Welsh speakers are, eh ? So ... here's some for you to try for yourselves, wherein you will hone your problem-solving skills ......... I've put a few easy ones in first... I've tried to include most of the challenges you might face in real life! [1] Casserole efeilliaid. [2] Ynglŷn [3] Ma'n rhaid i ti redeg off am bach a chwato. [4] Erstalwm [5] Esu mae 'na flynyddoedd ers pan oeddan ni'n rysgol efo'n gilydd. [6] "Watshad yr Italians ydach chi " [7] Ylwch ... dwi wedi llenwi dydd Llun. [8] .... wedi llosgi'n golysyn. [9] Y math eangderau ! [10] O'dd e'n ofnadwy ! [11] Mae dynes wedi cael ei harestio. [12] Cyn gwisgo ffedog heb gwyno. [13] Wel'so dwy o'n waitresses ..... [14] Meirion gwyllt. [15] Y fidog finiog. [16] Mae'n da dros ben. [17] Amdani [18] Dw i'n 'wa popeth ! [19] Login ..... y gorau !! [20] Dechrau Huw sgwennu efo sialc gwyn ar y bwrdd du. [21] Mae eu hymchwiliadau nhw'n dangos nad oes dim o'i le. [22] Ges i 'nal fel ro'n i'n gadael y tŷ ! [23] Ga i rai cloriau. [24] Gymharach. Before we move on to the music section, here's a free gift, the letters Ŵŵ and Ŷŷ ... lucky you ! Well , here's the mighty DATBLYGU with the brilliant, anarchic Casserole efeilliaid .... In a previous life, or rather a previous blog, I did a wonderful thing. I wrote ... or rather, had a go at writing ..... a complete guide to looking up Welsh words in a dictionary. It took weeks for me to get back some semblance of my sanity, and several bottles of gin. All you beginners out there will be thinking ... " What could possibly go wrong?" Ha! You poor deluded numpties are in for a shock...... the Welsh language is especially designed to make it almost impenetrable to all outsiders, and trying to look words up in what they laughingly refer to as a dictionary can be, to say the least, trying. For your delectation, I am going to try to recreate that terrific article, but with the added experience I have gained since .... negotiating that eponymous Rocky Road to Welsh! Here we go .... Here's the scenario ..... you've got a Welsh word and you want to find out what it means. The clever-arses always advise you to try to work out what it means from the context. Yeah, right! And I'm a spurgulent rimpletinker. So ..... You turn to your trusted dictionary ,and the bloody thing isn't in it. Here's a simple guide to what might have gone wrong...... [a] Maybe it's an obscure word .....try a succession of larger and larger dictionaries. [b] If it starts with ch- you might be looking for it under c- which would be the wrong place. [c] This also applies to rh- , ll- , ff- . [d] Don't forget that a word with -ng- in it could have you looking in the wrong place. [e] The word might have to have any possible mutation undone first. [f] This is doubly tricky for some words beginning with f- which might begin with m- or b- [g] This is easy to miss also when an invisible g- has to be restored to its rightful place. [h] An "h" at the start might have been put there for a laugh ... especially after a vowel. [h2] Sometimes adding -ach and -a in comparatives can change the spelling of the word. [i] Maybe it's a bit of obscure Wenglish. [j] Sometimes they like to miss the ys- off a word to keep you thinking. [k] Maybe you're looking at some wild and wonderful part of a verb. [l] Or perhaps you've forgotten that verbs-with-endings will tend to SM. [m] It could be you are looking at one of those peculiar plurals they are so fond of. [n] In colloquial Welsh in books, deliberate mis- spelling is another source of amusement. [o] Could be you have a conjugated preposition .... lovely! [p] One of the best tricks in the "frontal apostrophe." [ or 'tal 'phe ] [q] Of course, it might be a rude word, or too slangy. Yes, there are rude words in Welsh. [r] You can pull some words apart and find out what the bits mean..... oh yes! [s] If it has a prefix, you can remove it and try to find what's left ( remove SM first) [t] Could it be a proper name or a place-name? [u] If it's a group of words you don't get, maybe it's a an idiomatic usage. [t] Some words have different male and female versions .... [u] Sometimes a tricky word might combine several of these difficulties. [v] There can be unfamiliar literary Welsh endings. [w] Sometimes you think a word is obviously Wenglish but it isn't ! [x ] You can always try ... [a] Putting it into Google Translate [b] Having a guess and looking it up in the English to Welsh section. ... it can work. [c] Asking an actual Welsh speaker ! [d] Taking up a nice logical language like Spanish. There's more to add to this ..... lots of tricky words for you to look up .... but that will come in part 2 .... and after that harrowing list of possible heffalump traps we will have some music to calm you down .... here's Dafydd Iwan yn y Glaw ( Datblygu) featuring a remarkably apposite video ...
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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
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