We had some slowish clearish Welsh in the last post, and here's some more ... it's Mared Lenny .... formerly the singer Swci Boscawen, whose career in music came to an end when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour. She has reocvered but can no longer carry on with music and has become a painter instead ..... as a result of her condition and/or treatment she sees the world around her in a different way ...as you will see. I only found out recently that she had actually survived and was so pleased! Here's her talking about it all ... Now, here she is as she was, performing as Swci .....
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There's a whole series of videos called Munud Gyda where various famous-ish Welsh speakers answer dead simple questions .... they're mostly reasonably easy to understand ..... which is nice ... here's a few of them, you can easily find more ... here's Lynwen Haf Roberts to get us started ... and here's the cheerful Carys Eleri .... Here's Rhodri Miles ..... and here's Catrin Mara.... And now the music .... this is Specs Melyn by the excellent and wonderful Llwybr Llaethog ..... Your starter for 10 .... what's the toughest thing about learning Welsh? As far as I'm concerned, it's the words .... the sheer number of words you have to learn.... Let's face it, when you learn French or Spanish or German there are a lot of words that aren't totally and utterly unfamiliar to you...... we share loads of words with the Romance languages and many with the Germanic languages. But as for Welsh words .... you have nothing to link them to, hardly any familiar connections at all .... which means that. however far you have got with Welsh, there are going to be a lot of words you still don't know, and for which you have no way of working out for yourself what they might mean. So ..... how to you go about remembering shedloads of totally unfamiliar words? Well, of course, there are strategies , well-tried and tested strategies that can help. I'm going to show you how I've remembered successfully various Welsh words, to show you lots of different ways or routes to making a link in your mind ...... here we go ...... ffrae = a quarrel ....... which often leads to a fight or A FRAY ( " a fight or noisy quarrel ") golaith ..... to avoid/evade ..... why didn't Goliath just avoid meeting David in the first place ? brain = crows ..... think of a flock of crows pecking out your brains. rhan = part ....... the other night I ran part of the way home. colli = lost/to lose .... imagine a poor lost collie. addo = to promise ....... must be linked to "oath" llumon = chimney-stack .... lo and behold, lum is Scots for a chimney. paffio = to box .... and when the gloves hit, they go "paff, paff" tail = manure ..... cow's tails are always covered in manure. ffug = fake is just a slightly changed version of fake. chwant = desire , and sure enough there is the word "want" stuck to it. cenfig = envy, and there is the sound of "envy" inside it. cynuta = to gather firewood ... I'm sure King Canute did the same while trying to hold the tide back. wyth = eight ..... "I'm off to the pub at 8" ... " Who with ?" epa = ape ...... and it's ape backwards ! rhaff = rope .... raffia is a sort of paper rope . trwchfil = an insect ..... Jen was horrified to find a truckful of insects on her drive. datrys .... to solve.... it's a tricky case, and the DA trys to solve it. Dianc = to escape ... imagine an ankle-cuffed convict escaping by de-ankling himself. mynnu = to insist ... as far as money goes, I insist on cash on the nail. plygu = to fold ..... which must be linked to the idea of "ply" brethyn = cloth ... you can't make a cloth balloon, it wouldn't keep your breath in. There's loads and loads more of these, but that should give you lots of ideas I hope .... maybe you could let me know some of your neat ways or remembering certain Welsh words .... meanwhile, here's Trwbador with the beautiful, impressionistic Lluniau .... Words, words, words ..... it's a bit of theme with me at the moment. So, you are wondering, what the hell are whilberwords ? Well, they're my name for a Welsh word that is a rather subtle "collapsed version " of an English word. Unlike Wenglish, it's much more subtle that just a crude Welsh transcription of the English. Whilber ( Welsh for a wheelbarrow ) is an obvious example. You can also maybe think of this as the way a young child might first say "wheelbarrow." Once you get your eye in for these, you can find quite a few. My first self-found example of one, the one that set me on this line of thinking, was rhestr = a list. It suddenly occurred to me that this was nothing but the word "register" ..... which is a sort of list .... but collapsed in the way a child might say it .... to "rhestr." I was dead pleased with this "discovery", which I'm sure loads of other people have found out also .... but here's more of them from my extensive rhestr ... ( ! ) .... plas = hall, mansion ... surely a collapsed version (cv) of "palace." cwympo = to collapse ..... must be the way a child might say "crumple." gwacau = empty ..... it's "vacant" with a g stuck on the front and collapsed a bit. gwasg = press .... I reckon this is the word "squash" squashed a bit. syml = simple ..... that's not so subtle, but that's the way a baby would say it first off. saer = a carpenter ... I'm sure that is a cv of sawyer .... obvious when you see it ! pinwn = opinion ... isn't that exactly how a child would say opinion? ildio = to give in .... it's just a cv of "yield" [ Notice how the last two had the typical child's trick of chopping off the start of the word.] gwiwer = squirrel ..... another rather unsubtle cv.... this time with a mangled middle. eiddgar = ardent, zealous ... well, it's a cv of eager isn't it ! addurno = to decorate ... here we have a cv of "adorn." areithio = to speak .... a first go at saying "orate" elfen = element .... this cv has a mangled middle as well. ... maybe the f-m soft mutation ? unsain = unison ..... bloody obvious ! teclyn = tool, instrument is the first-timer's go at saying " tackle." erthygl = article .... I reckon that's one ... a slight long shot but true enough ? ymuno = to join ..... I reckon it's "communal" cv'd and the front and back chopped off. tenau = thin ..... surely this is not far from tenuous ? bendigedig = blessed ... it has to be the cv of benediction with the end mangled. cynfas = sheet, bed ....... a "baby go" at canvas ? ymbil = to implore ... could well be a mangled version of "appeal." addoli = to worship .... come on folks, it's idolise ! Well .. that's enough to set you off finding your own. The great thing is, even if they're not true, they are a great way to help you remember these words anyway. Win-win. Here's a great song ... Addewidion by Yr Ods ... and what is addewid ( promise) but a child's mangled version of " avow."? Sorry About The Huge Gap I will try to find out how to position these things better ! This is a follow-on from the last post .... I'll tell you what it was about .... a week or so ago I bought a cheap, old ( 1900-ish ?) English -to -Welsh dictionary ..... and leafing through it I was amazed at the number of ridiculous English words in the listing. I'm pretty good at obscure words but many of these were straight out of the wildest imaginations of Beachcomber. Here's some of them ... just ones I spotted as I flipped the pages ... I've found quite a few more since last time .... Buffle-horncup, Browsick, Frozy, Alectryomansy, Fox-case, Hakot, Habnab, Lipwisdom, Mustrol, Uberocity, Tyromancy,Alexipharmic, Co-hobate, Wranglands,Bottomry, Bowge, Boutefeu, Cassweed,Abarticulation, Counterbound, Deflourer, Bubbing-school, Emeroids, Erotion,Absterge, Narrable, Knuff, Jobbernowl, Jack-a-lanthorn, Inthronization, Zythepsary, Yarringles, Burgeols, Accly, Feoffer, Fulciment, Lanugo, Agillochum, Bunium, Fencibles, Water-farcy, Yelk, Eared-land, Affy ................ Let's remember, these are all, apparently, English words that the compiler of this dictionary thought that the purchaser would be likely to need, and not only that, he/she might need to translate them into Welsh ! Blimey ! Briwsion ! Rarglwyd !! Not one of those is in the Chambers English dictionary, nor are they in Y Geiriadur Mawr. So there ! So, I set about trying to find out what these ridiculous contraptions actually mean.... by seeing what the Welsh translation was and working out what it meant. Clever eh ?Let's take a look at the results shall we .......... well, some of them anyway .... Uberocity = ffrwthiondeb, llewndid....... well ffrwthiondeb means fertility/ fruitfulness, and llewndid means abundance/ fullness. Great word ! Must use it sometime! I've got twins so maybe I suffer from uberocity myself. Bottomry = llongwystyl ..... so llong is a ship of course, and gwystl turns out to mean a pledge or a hostage! So could be a ship-hostage .... whatever that is. Obviously a key word back in the day though! Notice how the second word that's stuck behind the first one gets soft-mutated, so you have to un-soft-mutate it . Knuff = drel , delbren, delff ..... .... delbren is a great word, it means a cudgel,a log, a stupid fellow and remarkably, a stick tied to a dog's tail !!! Thank the Lord I didn't miss out on that one. I suppose there was very little to do in those days other that tie sticks to dog's tails. Drel is a churl or a knave, and delff, what a surprise, is an oaf, a churl or a clown. To be honest, all languages I've ever come across have thousands of words for churls, clowns, chumps and the like. So, a Knuff is probably some sort of idiot. Frozy = mws, mwll, drewllyd..... that's an easy one, they respectively have the idea of stinking, warmth/sultriness and ,er, stinking again. Phew ! Fulciment = atteg ,cynalbost...... well, no atteg to be found, but ateg is a prop or post. Cynalbost also suffers from double-letter syndrome, it's presumably cynnal ( to hold or to support) and post means a post. So it's a long-winded and ridiculous way of saying " a post." Remember I told you that misspellings are rife ..... assume the worst !!!!! Water-farcy = Y clefri dyfrllyd ..... I like the idea of water-farcy ! I imagine young knuffs from the village after a hard day's uberocity going to the village pond for a bit of water-farcy. .... which will do wonders for their general frozy-ness. However, that's not what it means at all! clefri = leprosy, and dyfrllyd means moist or watery. So it's actually a horrible affliction, the "watery leprosy." Very biblical .... and, by the way, there tend to be a lot of Biblical words in old Welsh bibles, and new ones too come to that..... Wranglands = cranc-coed .... which translates simply as crab-wood .... could it be an apple wood or orchard ( crab-apples ?). Tyromancy = caws-goel ...... caws is obviously cheese, and according the my similarly ancient Welsh-English dictionary which I've been mainly using for all this, coel=cofl= belief, trust,credit. Cheese-belief anybody ? Cassweed = pwrs y bugail .... which even I know is Shepherd's Purse! On the other hand............ Erotion = ysiad, difâd ..... neither of which are in anything..... iad = pate or cranium, and iâd is the same by the way .... but that doesn't make much sense, and as for difâd , bad (m) = a boat, and bad (f) = plague , of which plague is the only likely candidate, but then (a) where's the hat gone off the a, and (b) the di- prefix would imply that the person hasn't got the plague which rather ruins the whole thing. Then there's the possibility of it being mad = benefit, good ... but again, where's the hat gone ? So erotion might be not-good, not-boat ...... basically I've no idea ! Narrable = traethadwy ...... well we all know that traeth is a strand or a beach , and lo and behold, adwy means a gap, breach or pass. So it looks as though a narrable is a gap or breach in a beach. There ought to be a seaside village somewhere in Wales which gets flooded a lot ans is called Narrable..... tybed ? Well, I'm tired now, what with all this poring through ancient dictionaries in tiny tiny tiny print. OK .. ... here's Pop Negatif Wastad with iawn .... this'll cheer me up ..... If you want a good laugh, there's nothing quite like an ancient Welsh dictionary. Anything before about 1920 will have enough ridiculous stuff in it to last you many a winter's evening by the fireside. You don't believe me ? Here we go ..... The other day I bought very cheaply an ancient Welsh-English dictionary. I don't know the exact date , but early 1900's is an educated guess. Leafing through the ultra-thin, ultra-dinky pages I was amazed to find loads and loads of entries for farcical "English" words. Why would anybody. even way back in 1903, want to look up the Welsh word for such brilliant English (?) words as Buffle-horncup, Browsick, Frozy, Fox-case, Hakot, Habnab, Lipwisdom, Mustrol, Uberocity, Tyromancy, Co-hobate, Wranglands,Bottomry, Bowge, Boutefeu, Cassweed, Counterbound, Deflourer, Bubbing-school, Emeroids, Erotion, Narrable, Knuff, Jobbernowl, Jack-a-lanthorn, Inthronization, Zythepsary, Yarringles, ............... I swear, on every page of this incredible dictionary there are those words and many many more..... all carefully translated into Welsh in case any Frozy Deflourer, intent on Inthroning some Counterbound Buffle-horncup might need his or her Narrable Yarringles treated with Bowge or Bottomry by the local Zythepsary. who Co-hobates at a nearby Bubbing-school. Who knows ? Anyhow, lucky me is going to investigate further ... for a start, I have a similarly ancient Welsh-English dictionary, and I'm going to look those all up in reverse to see what I get ( a bad case of Habnab and/or Knuff i expect). OK then .... music time today is Cerys Matthews live on Bandit doing a song about a spider and a fly ... Well, I sulked a bit, but I've got over it ...... see previous post. So here's something a bit more lighthearted .... some of the Wenglish I've collected ..... and some of it is truly gruesome. shyrup ynganu rili bows pyrci ypseto desbret eniw ffefryn ysblennyd lyfli broses sengl tshecio polis brwtaliti seis nains basdad sicstis ynffinishd fasnin byji ianci-dŵdls twenti-ffaif-cwid You can find lots more of this sort of thing on a site called Talk Tidy ... it says it is the "Home of Wenglish." Plenty of excitement there ..... but on a more mundane level, why is there so much English in Welsh writing and speech? Pamela Petro talks about the Welsh being "pinned under a blanket of English" which can't be denied. Well, while we all think about that, here's a lovely thing .... it's Al Lewis and Sarah Howells doing Darlun .... and here's another lovely thing .... it's the same two doing a smashing version of a Catatonia song ... an English one but what the hell .... Road Rage .... Blydi lyfli !
Well, here's one of Datblygu's songs that I seem to have missed.
But here it is. In this song I find myself being told that as a "hobby" Welsh learner I am not wanted , I am despised., villified even. Obviously i am aware that there is a minority who think that "outsiders" should not treat the language as a sort of "playground", or as a little curiosity that they can study in the same way they would press flowers. Maybe more than a minority. Also, on my previous blog, which ran for several years before it mysteriously disappeared, I did sometimes get horrible, sometimes violent comments very much in line with what is being said in this song. But ... hearing this from a band I really admire ... well, it's made me think about all this again. The three years I spent in Wales as a student ( a long, long time ago) were easily the happiest and best years of my life.... it's been all downhill from there! So .... what do us "dabblers" do about all this? I don't know, but I'm going to sulk for a while and decide what to do. Here's the words, plus, just this once, an English translation ... Gradd da yn y Gymraeg Ar y Volvo bathodyn Tafod y Ddraig Hoff o fynychu pwyllgorau blinedig Am ddyfodol yr iaith yn enwedig, Meistrioli iaith lleifrifol fel hobi Platiau dwyiethog i helpu y gyrru Agwedd cwbl addas Ar gyfer cynllun cartre Syth mas o set 'Dinas'. Wastod yn mynd i Lydaw Beth yn mynd i Ffrainc, Wastod yn mynd i Wlad y Basg Byth yn mynd i Sbaen. Fin nos yn mynychu bwytai Wedi dydd ar y prosessydd geiriau, Mewn swydd sy'n talu'r morgais I'ch gwyneb person cwbl cwrtais, O'r ysgol feithrin i Brifysgol Cymru Tocyn oes ar y tren grefi, Byddai'n well da fi fod yn jynci Na bod mor wyrdd a phoster Plaid Cymru. Darnau gosod yr Wyl Gerdd Dant A holl broblemau'r ddau o blant, Gweri telyn Llinos Wyn, A phroblem acne Llwarch Glyn, Heb anghofio codi stwr Am straen angeuol job y gwr- Mae'n gorfod gweithio un tan tri Yn gynhyrchydd BBC, Llosgwch eich tafodau Ar eich panedau piwritanaidd, Collwch eich dynoliaeth Mewn economeg academaidd. Ewch cyfeillion sy'n enwogion Gyd o'r Seri Rhyddion, Trafodwch tapiau corau meibion A'r eitemau sydd ar 'Hel Straeon' Rhifau cynulleidfa'r oedfa A pha liw lenni'r lolfa, Tiwtoriad preifat i helpu'r plant Neuadd Dewi Sant, Digon o wyliau i gynnal lliw haul Digon wrth Brydeinig i swnio fel Sig Heil (x2) Meistroli iaith lleifrifol fel hobi Dweud fod Cymru'n cael ei orthrymu, Cawsoch radd da yn y Cymraeg (x4) Ar y Volvo bathodyn Tafod Y Ddraig Gradd da yn y Cymraeg (x3) Cymraeg (x6) Gradd da yn y Gymraeg Ar y Volvo. A good degree in Welsh On the Volvo a Tafod Y Ddraig sticker, Fond of attending tiresome committee meetings About the future of the language in particular, Mastering a minority language as a hobby Bilingual plates to help the driving, A perfectly appropriate attitude For a home plan straight out of the 'Dinas' st. Always going to Brittany, Never going to France, Always going to the Basque country Never going to Spain. At night going to restaurants After a day on the word processor, in a job that pays your mortgage To your face a perfectly courteous person From nursery scholl to the University of Wales A lifetime ticket on the gravy train, I would rather be a junkie Than be as green as a Plaid Cymru poster. The set texts of the Cerdd Dant Festival And all the problems of the two children, Llinos Wyn's harp lessons And Llwyarch Clyn's acne problem. Not forgetting to raise a fuss About the deadly strain of the husband's job, He has to work from one to three As a BBC producer. Burn your tongues On your puritanical cups of tea Lose your humanity in academic economics. Name your friends who are famous All of them freemasons, Discuss male voice choir tapes And the items that are on 'Hel Straeon' The numbers in the congregation And what colour should the lounge curtains be, Private tutors to help the children, St. David's Hall. Enough holidays to maintain a suntan. Anti British enough to sound like Sieg Heil (x2) Mastering a minority language as a hobby Saying that Wales is being oppressed, Even thouh your cars have Tafod Y Ddraig stickers You had a good degree in Welsh (x4) On the Volvo a Tafod Y Ddraig sticker, Good degree in Welsh (x3) Welsh (x6) Good degree in Welsh On the Volvo. |
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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