Category: Welsh (Cymraeg)

Back in Bangor

By Simon

I arrived back from New York a few hours ago after an overnight flight from JFK to Manchester. The flight went smoothly, apart from a bit if bumpiness at one point, and I managed to sleep a bit. The sun was shining in Manchester and in Bangor, though it’s a lot cooler here than it was in New York.

The second and final day of the conference was great with some interesting talks and lots of opportunities to practise languages. In the evening quite a few polyglots went to a roof top bar with great views and I spoke quite a lot of Welsh, Irish and Mandarin, and bits and pieces of my other languages.

On Monday morning I went on a language-spotting trip to Queens with a few other polyglots, and we found at least 15 different languages there. In the afternoon I went to a kind of book fair – one of the conference organisers was gvien many language courses, dictionaries and other language-related books by a publisher, and she decided to share them. Her apartment is in The Asonia, a very elegant former hotel in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. After that we went to bar in Brooklyn for some more socialising and polyglottery.

Yesterday morning I finally made it to Staten Island, and also walked the entire length of Central Park – 2.5 miles, though it felt further with my heavy bag, and getting lost. Then I headed to the airport. If I’d arrived earlier on Friday I would have gone to a polyglot picnic in Central Park, but by the time I got out of the airport and into Manhattan, it was finished.

So now I’m trying to catch up with the emails that arrived while I was away. If you’ve written to me recently and haven’t yet received a reply, please be patient.

Polyglot Conference, New York

By Simon

This weekend I am in New York for the 2015 Polyglot Conference. I arrived yesterday afternoon after an uneventful flight from Manchester. It took a couple of hours to get out of the airport, and another hour or so to Manhattan.

Last night I met up with some other polyglots near the Statan Island ferry terminal – we were planning to take the ferry over to Statan Island, but unfortunately it started raining heavily and we decided to postpone the trip. We explored Lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village for a while, then I went home, while the others went on to a bar.

The conference started this morning at the SVA Chelsea Theater, which is just around the corner from where I’m staying. There were talks all day about a variety of interesting subjects, including Forensic Linguistics, Proto-Indo-European and Lakota language revival. There are plenty of people here who I know from previous polyglot events, and I’ve met lots of new people.

So far I’ve spoken English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Esperanto and Toki Pona, and have met people who speak various other languages.

The conference continues tomorrow, and then I have a couple of days of sightseeing before returning to the UK.

Irish and Ndebele

By Simon

Yesterday I went to Global Café, a group for international students which I’ve been going to on and off since I was a student myself. I use it as a chance to meet people and practise my languages, and I got to speak quite a few different languages last night, including Welsh, French, Irish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese and German. There were also speakers of Vietnamese, Arabic, Malay, Northern Ndebele, and probably other languages.

The most linguistically interesting person I met there was a guy who grew up in Ireland where he spoke Northern Ndebele at home, and was educated through the medium of Irish. He also learnt English and French at school, and is currently working on Mandarin and Welsh. His parents come from Zimbabwe, and his dad speaks about 10 languages. He had a bit of trouble with my Ulster Irish, but we managed to communicate okay. I don’t think I’ve met anyone else who speaks a Bantu and a Celtic language before.

What is the most unusual combination of languages you’ve come across?

Hi. Keefak? Ça va?

By Simon

Hi. Keefak? Ça va?

What language(s) do they speak in Beirut?

According to an interesting programme and article I came across today, many people in Beirut speak Arabic, French and English, and frequently switch between them, often using two of them, or all three in the same sentence.

While some might see this kind codeswitching as a sign that people haven’t learnt any of the languages completely, others believe it is a way people express their Lebanese identity. In fact, codeswitching requires a good knowledge of all the languages you’re switching between, especially when it occurs within sentences.

Are there other places where most people regularly codeswitch between three of more languages like this?

In Wales codeswitching between English and Welsh is common, and with some of my friends we add French, and/or other languages, into the mix.

Custard sandwiches and pancakes

By Simon

Sniglet - any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should

The Welsh word for sandwich is brechdan [ˈbrɛxdan], which comes from the Irish word brechtán (butter, fat), according to the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru.

However according to MacBain’s Dictionary, is related to the Scottish Gaelic word for pancake, breacag, which is related to breachdan (custard), which comes from the Middle Irish breachtán (a roll), which is related to the Welsh words brithog (mottled, variegated, multi-coloured, speckled, fine) and brith (marked with different colours, variegated, coloured, chequered, mottled, pied, spotted, speckled, brindled, grey), which are related to the word word breac (speckled) in Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

According to the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, brechdan is a sandwich, and also a slice of bread and butter; sandwich; cake or shortbread.

There are also a number of interesting types of sandwich in Welsh:

– brechdan fawd / gorddi = slice of bread on which butter is spread with the thumb
– brechdan gaerog / ddwbl / linsi / fetal / deiliwr = an oatcake on a slice of buttered white bread or between two slices of white bread
– brechdan grasu = toast, toasted sandwich
– brechdan i aros pryd = slice of bread and butter to carry on with until the next meal, snack
– brechdan doddion = slice of bread spread with dripping
– brechdan driagl / driog = slice of bread spread with treacle

For details of the origins of the word sandwich, see Sandwiches and Portsmouths

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
les dentier dentures dannedd gosod
le chantier building site safle adeiladu
la dictature dictatorship unbennaeth; awtocratiaeth; teyrnlywodraeth
le dictateur dictator unben; teyrn
l’autocratie absolute dictatorship unbennaeth
une quinzaine; quine jours; deux semaines fortnight pythefnos
le dent de sagesse, le gros dent wisdom tooth cilddant olaf, cefnddant
poser sa candidature pour to apply for (a job) cynnig, ymgeisio, ymgynnig, gwneud cais
dépliant leaflet taflen; dalen
la disquette floppy disk disg llipa
déblie; allumé geek, nerd llipryn, gwlanen, brechdan
le monument classifié listed builing adeilad cofrestredig
le conseil d’administration board (of directors) bwrdd (cyfarwyddwyr)
l’affairiste; le magouiller wheeler dealer sgemiwr a sgiliwr
magouiller to wheel and deal sgemio a sgilio
mettre son nez partout to have a finger in every pie bod gan fys ym mhob brŵes/cawl
se mêler partout to have a finger in many pies bod gan fys ym mhob brŵes/cawl

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
le ragoût; stew stiw; lobsgóws
(faire) mijoter; cuire en ragoût to stew stiwio; mud-ferwi
le ragoût de mouton Irish stew lobsgóws; cawl; pwt y berw
le pot-au-feu beef stew stiw eidion
le navarin d’agneau lamb stew stiw oen
le civet de cheveuil venison stew stiw fenswn/feneiswn
le ragoût de légumes vegetable stew stiw llysiau
ça m’a rien donner I have nothing to show for it nid oedd gennyf ddim i’w ddangos er
ça a fait tilt the penny dropped syrthiodd y geiniog
épeler to spell (aloud) sillafu
écrire; orthographier to spell (in writing) sillafu
la zone humide
la terre humide		 wetland tir gwlyb; cors; corstir; tir corsiog
la tourbière bog (wetland) cors
la tourbière peat bog mawnog; mawndir
la tourbe peat mawn
trotter to trot tuthio; trotian; trotio
trotteur trotter tuthiwr; trotiwr

Poor mean houses

By Simon

Cottages in Abergwyngregyn

On the bus to Conwy today I noticed that the Welsh name of one of the stops included the word teios, which I hadn’t come across before. In English the stop had the word cottages in it.

I wrote down what I thought I heard and saw: teilios, but couldn’t find that in any Welsh dictionary. When I looked for cottages however I found the word teios, which is a combination of tai (plural of tŷ, house) and the diminutive ending -os, which was most commonly-used in North Wales (in the 18th and 19th centuries), but spread to the rest of Wales, according to the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru.

Translations of teios include small or poor houses; poor mean houses; and mean pitiful houses.

Some of the buses round here have a screen at the front that shows the name of the next stop in Welsh and English, and there are recorded announcements in both languages as well. The English announcements were recorded by someone with an English accent who mispronounces the Welsh names – he gets the consonants more or less right, but the vowels are often slightly off, and the stress is sometimes in the wrong place. I don’t know why they didn’t ask the guy who does the Welsh announcements to do the English ones as well.

When I hear a language or words pronounced in unusual ways it tends to grate a bit on my ears, just as out-of-tune singing or musical instruments do. There’s nothing wrong with foreign accents, but sometimes they can make comprehension more difficult. I try to speak languages (and sing and play instruments) as in tune as possibly. Do you?

Súilíní

By Simon

Súilíní

I discovered an interesting word in Irish yesterday – súilíní [ˈsˠuːl̪ʲiːn̪ʲiː] – which is a diminutive form of súil [sˠuːl̪ʲ] (eye) and means literally “small eyes”, and actually means eyelets, an aperture-sight, or bubbles. For example, uisce gan súilíní is still water (“water without bubbles”) [source].

More common Irish words for bubbles are bolgán and boilgeog.

The word súilíní is also used in Hiberno-English to mean “bubbles of fat floating on top of a stew or clear soup”, and is also written sooleens [source].

The word súil (eye) comes from *sūli, an alteration of the Proto-Celtic *sūle (suns), the dual of *sūlos, which is the genitive of *sāwol (sun), from the Proto-Indo-European *sóh₂wl̥ (sun). Apparently in Irish mythology the sun was seen as the “eye of the sky”, and the word for sun came to mean eye [source].

The words for sun in other European languages come from the same root, and most start with s, e.g. saũle (Latvian), sol (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese), Sonne (German), etc. There are some exceptions though, including haul (Welsh) heol (Breton), howl (Cornish) and ήλιος (ḗlios – Greek) [source].

Telyn newydd / New Harp

By Simon

Fy nhelyn newydd / My new harp

Mae fy nhelyn newydd wedi cyrraedd y bore ‘ma. Telyn efo 34 tannau o’r enw Ossian Clarsach< gan Tim Hampson ydy hi.

Pan ro’n i yn Plymouth dwy wythnos yn ôl yn ymweld â fy chwaer, mi es i i Bere Ferrers, nid mor bell o Plymouth, i gwrdd â Tim Hampson ac i weld y delyn. Mae o’n gwneud atgynhyrchiadau o delynau hanesyddol, ac yn atgyweirio telynau hefyd, ac roedd hi’n ddiddorol iawn gweld ei weithdy ac sut mae o’n gwneud telynau. Mae’r delyn Ossian wedi ei seilio ar delynau y 1930au a 1940au gwneud gan Henry Briggs yn Glasgow. Dw i wedi canu hi am oriau heddiw yn barod, ac mae hi’n swnio yn wych, ac yn edrych yn wych hefyd.

Yn y ffoto mae fy nhelyn newydd, a fy nhelyn bach y brynes i y llynedd.

My new harp arrived this morning. It’s a 34 string Ossian Clarsach made by Tim Hampson.

While I was in Plymouth visiting my sister a few weeks ago, I went to to Bere Ferrers, not far from Plymouth, to meet Tim Hampson and to see the harp. He makes reproductions of historical harps, and repairs and services harps as well, and it was fascinating to see his workshop and how he makes harps. The Ossian harp is based on harps made in the 1930s and 1940s by Henry Briggs in Glasgow. I’ve already played it for several hours today, and it sounds wonderful, and looks good too.

The photo shows my new harp with my little lap harp, which I got last year.