Well, I was in a charity bookshop and they had a little shelf of language books.... that Harri Potter one was there ... so I took it down and opened it with much the same reaction I had to Cusan Dyn Dall ... that is, blimey! Readers, I bought it. I had minimal knowledge of Welsh at that time, only the bits and bobs left over from my three years as a student in Bangor ( Dim Plant, Y Gorau ( on bridges as an advert for brakes) , Croeso i Ddinas Bangor, Pwll Nofio ...
Both of those books are smashing, but not at all the sort of books you want to be buying as a complete beginner. Not at all at all at all !
Here's a Harri Potter purchaser who agrees with me ...
"As a foreign language learning hobbyist I find that one of the best ways to practise reading and acquire vocabulary, without having to reach for the dictionary every other minute, is to read translations of well known English language works in tandem with the original. To this end, whenever I am abroad, I always scour the bookshops for target language versions of works by authors I recognise, and the first one I always search for is H P and the P S. I would not recommend it to the complete beginner, as it uses complicated sentence structure and the full range of tenses from the outset (it was not written for language learners), but once you are past the complete beginners' stage and approaching foundation level you can launch into it, and use the level of difficulty you are experiencing as a measure of the progress you are making. I started a bit too early,and it was taking me about an hour to struggle through just one page, but by the time I finished I was reading about a page every ten minutes (if you are doing it properly, identifying all the vocabulary, structures, tenses etc from the original).
Sometimes you find that a translator has used a little too much artistic licence in order to create a naturally flowing rendition into their own language, even to the point, sometimes, of omitting text or altering the original content to facilitate the translation, but this is not the case here. Emily Huwes the translator keeps close to the original without sacrificing the naturalness and spontaneity of the Welsh (as far as I can tell). I wish she had kept to the original names of characters and school houses though. It may be necessary in other languages to produce their own versions in order to preserve the spirit of the original, but let's face it - nobody will be reading this in Welsh who doesn't also speak fluent English, so the feel of the original names will not be lost in any case.
It amazes me that you can get the full range of Harry Potter in some of the most obscure languages imaginable, but in Welsh the only one available is the Philosopher's Stone. Come on Bloomsbury, let's have the rest!
PS I am currently reading Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr Fox" (Mr Cadno Campus in Welsh) and this is a much easier read. I wish I had done it the other way round!"
He's right . So how did I manage to do things the right way round ? Well, funnily enough, I've explained about that already, so you can skip over to it using this handy, free-at-the-point-of-use link ..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zurxqo8YGc
And now, you legions** of slavering readers, here's that Geraint Jarman again, this time with Methu Dal y pwysa ...
** Still somewhat exaggerated