As you all know, over the year I'm always looking out for brilliant Welsh sentences ...they are then whittled down to a final winner.
This year I was getting a bit worried about the future of this prestigious award ... nothing had struck me as worthy. But yesterday, as I was trundling through Roald Dahl's Y Gwrachod I came across a worthy winner.... as I reached one third of the way down page 15 my eyes alighted on this little gem ... prepare yourselves ...
Fe af i â ti i'w weld e os wyt ti easiau.
Let's go through its winning features ..... for a start, there's a mere 28 characters conveying bags of information. Then there's the amazing word-length distribution ..
Word Length 1 2 3 4 5 6 total
Frequency 5 5 1 1 0 1 13
This leaves us with an astonishing mean word length of 28/13 = 2.154 letters per word !!
Show me another language in the world that can match that!
Then there's its conversational clout ..... can you imagine listening to this torrent of dinky-winky words hitting your brain's Welsh-analysis-circuits like machine-gun fire. I reckon you can say the sentence in less than 3 seconds! That's about 4 syllables a second. Cripes !
This top sentence keeps the Welsh language firmly on its pinnacle of indecipherability !
A worthy winner indeed.
Today's song firmly sticks to the festive mood ... it's the Sam Tân Song ... !
Pan fydd galwad brys yn dod
Mae Sam mor brydlon ag erioed
Byth yn methu rhoi help llaw
Byth yn methu lleddfu'r braw
Mae'n achub pawb drwy'r fro
Sam,Sam Tân
Heb unwaith fynd o'i go'
Sam,Sam Tân
Does neb tebyg i ti
Arwr ein pentre bach ni