Category: Welsh (Cymraeg)

Without one red halfpenny

By Simon

When putting together this week’s French words and expressions from the French Conversation Group today, I discovered some interesting French and Welsh equivalents of ‘(to be) broke’.

In French the equivalent of broke (penniless) is fauché or if you’re really broke fauché comme les blés (broke like wheat). To be broke is être fauché and to go broke is faire faillite. Synonyms for fauché include:

– abattu = downcast
– besogneux = hard-working
– chipé = pinched
– coupé = cut
– démuni = destitute
– désargenté = impoverished
– misérable = miserable
– pauvre = poor
– ruiné = ruined
– tondu = chopped / shorn
– volé = robbed

In Welsh there are quite a few different ways to say that you’re penniless:

– heb yr un geiniog = ‘without a single penny’
– heb yr un ddimai goch y delyn = ‘without a single red halfpenny of the harp’
– heb gragen i ymgrafu = ‘without a shell to rub’
– heb yr un ffado = ‘without a ?’
– heb yr un ffaden beni = ‘without a ?’

There are also quite a few ways to express the same meaning in English, including:

– broke / stony-broke / flat broke
– skint
– bankrupt
– bust
– cleaned out
– without a penny to one’s name / a red cent
– on one’s uppers
– penniless
– stony-broke
– strapped for cash
– without two pennies/cents to rub together
– boracic / brassic = boracic lint* = skint (rhyming slang) – I knew that word boracic meant penniless, but never realised it was rhyming slang until now.

* According to Wikipedia, “Boracic lint was a type of medical dressing made from surgical lint that was soaked in a hot, saturated solution of boracic acid and glycerine and then left to dry. It has been in use since at least the 19th century, but is now less commonly used.”

Sources: Reverso, L’Internaute, Geiriadur yr Academi, Wikitionary.

Do you use any of these, or do you have other expressions for being skint?

Paid a gwgu!

By Simon

I learnt the Welsh expression Paid a gwgu! [paɪd a ˈgʊgɨ] from friends in Aberystwyth yesterday. It means ‘Don’t frown/glower/scowl!’. I like the sound of gwgu, which doesn’t seem like a frowny word to me – it’s more like a baby’s babbling. Related words include gwg (frown) and gwgus (frowning).

Words for frown in Irish, grainc and gruig, are possibly related to the Welsh word gwg. Other words frowny Irish words include púic and místá. The verbal expression is grain/gruig a chur ort féin (to put a frown on oneself), and an idiomatic way of saying, for example, ‘he frowned at me’ is bhí muc ar gach mala aige chugam (“he had a pig on each eyebrow to me”).

Audio illusions

By Simon

Last Sunday I took part in a carol concert, both singing in the Bangor Community Choir, and singing with everybody else as part of the audience / congregation. The chapel where this took place is a bilingual one where people are encouraged to sing in Welsh or English – words for both are projected on the front wall. I think roughly half of those there sang in Welsh and the other half in English. I sang mostly in Welsh, and found that when doing so, I could hear the other people singing in Welsh around me and could hardly hear those singing in English. The opposite was true when I sang in English – I could hear the other people singing in English, but couldn’t hear the Welsh singing nearly as clearly. Occasionally I stopped singing for a little while and could hear both languages, though if I concentrated on one, the other wasn’t as clear.

It was a bit like one of those pictures which look like one thing if you look at them in a certain way, and like something else if you look at them differently. With those it’s almost impossible to see both versions at the same time. When I was singing I could hear both languages being sung around me if I concentrated on doing so, but the one I was singing in was much more noticeable and easier to hear.

Have you had any similar experiences?

Os

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered that the French word for bone, os, is pronounced /ɔs/ in the singular, as I suspected, but /o/ in the plural [source]. Os is also used in English as a zoological and medical term for bone and is pronounced /ɒs/ (UK) or /ɑs/ (US). Final consonants of French words aren’t usually pronounced, unless followed by a word beginning with a vowel, so you just have to memorise ones like os.

Os appears in such words and expressions as:
– ossature /ɔsatyʀ/ = frame(work), skeletal/bone structure
– osselet /ɔslɛ/ = knucklebone, ossicle (small bone in the middle ear), osselet (small animal bone)
– osseux /ɔsø/ = bone, osseus, bony
– ossification = ossification
– ossifier /ɔsifje/ = to ossify (to harden, make into bone)
– ossuaire /ɔsɥɛʀ/ = ossuary (receptacle or place for the bones of the dead)

– c’est un paquet / sac d’os = he’s a bag of bones, he’s skin and bone
– mouillée / trempé jusqu’aux os = to be soaked to the skin, wet through
– donner un os à ronger à qn = to give sb something to keep them out of mischief (or) keep them quiet
– l’avoir dans l’os = to be done, to get egg all over one’s face (slang)
– il y a un os = there’s a snag / hitch
– tomber sur un os = to come across a snag

Os comes from the Latin os (bone), from the ancient Greek ὀστέον (bone), which is also the root of the prefix osteo-, and is not to be confused with ōs /ɔːs/, (mouth, face, entrance).

In Welsh os means ‘if’.

Rwsieg

By Simon

Yn ystod mis Tachwedd a mis Rhagfyr eleni dw i’n canolbwyntio ar Rwsieg. Dw i’n dysgu’r iaith efo languge101.com, cwrs arlein sy’n defnyddio ‘spaced repitition system’ neu system ailadroddiad ar wahan. Mae’r cwrs yn addysgu brawddegau Rwsieg efo recoriadau araf a recordiadau cyflymder normal. Yn gyntaf mae o’n gofyn yn Saesneg sut i ddweud rhywbeth yn Rwsieg, ac yna ti’n dweud y frawddeg, os ti’n ei gwybod hi. Yna ti’n gwrando yr ateb ac yn dweud wrth y system os ti’n gwybod y frawddeg yn berffaith, yn dda, yn eitha da, ayyb. Mae’r system yn dy brofi ar yr un frawddeg ar ôl rhyw munudau, ac yna ar ôl cyfnodau hirach a hirach i atgynerthu dy goffa.

Dyma tipyn bach o Rwsieg:

Здравствуйте = Helô / Shwmae (ffurfiol)
Привет = Helô / Shwmae (anffurfiol)
Как ваши дела? = Sut ydych chi?
Как дела? = Shwmae? Ti’n iawn?
Oткуда вы? = O ble ydych chi’n dod?
Oткуда ты? = O ble wyt ti’n dod? (inf)
Я из … = Dw i’n dod o …
Очень приятно = Mae’n dda gen i gwrdd â chi / Neis cwrdd â chi

Mae mwy o frawddegau a recordiadau (gan siaradwr Rwsieg brodorol) ar gael ar: Omniglot, ac mae ychydig o wersi Rwsieg yng Nghymraeg (trwy cartwnau) ar gael ar: Caterpillar and Red Post Boxes.

Dyma Geiriadur Rwsieg-Cymraeg-Saesneg-Llydaweg-Gwyddeleg dw i’n newydd darganfod.

Le mal de pays

By Simon

One of the things that came up at the French conversation group last night was homesickness.

In French there are a number of ways to express this concept:
– nostalgique = homesick (adj)
– avoir le mal de pays = to be homesick (for a place/country)
– s’ennuyer de (sa famille) = to be homesick (for one’s family)
– avoir la nostalgie (de qch) = to be homesick (for something)

Example
L’odeur de l’herbe lui donna la nostalgie de la ferme de ses parents.
The smell of the grass made her homesick for her parents’ farm.

The Welsh word for homesickness is hiraeth /hɪəraɪ̯θ/, which is apparently one of those words that is untranslatable. It means homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, and the earnest desire for the Wales of the past. It has similarities to saudade in Portuguese and morriña in Galician [source].

Do other languages have words with a similar meaning?

Ventriloquism

By Simon

There was quite a bit of talk about ventriloquism on an episode of QI I watched recently, mainly because one of the guests was a ventriloquist. The word ventriloquism comes for the Latin words venter (stomach, belly, womb) and loquī (to speak) so it means “to speak from the stomach”. It was known as εγγαστριμυθία (gastromancy) in Greek, which means the same thing.

In other languages the word for ventriloquist is either from the Latin, e.g. ventriloquia (Spanish), ventriloque (French), ventriloquo (Italian), or a calque of the word: Bauchredner (German – ‘belly speaker’), Brzuchomówstwo (Polish – ‘belly speaker), 腹語術 (Chinese – ‘belly language art/skill’). In Welsh though, the word is tafleisydd, from tafle (to throw), llais (voice) and -ydd (suffix for a person or tool), so it means ‘voice thrower’.

Ventriloquism apparently started a religious practice. Ventriloquists were thought to be able to speak to the dead and predict the future, and the voices that seemed to come from the stomachs were thought to be those of the dead. By the 19th century ventriloquism became a form of entertainment and people started using dummies, at least in the West. In other parts of the world, such as among the Zulu, Inuit and Maori, ventriloquism is used for religious and ritual purposes.

Ventriloquism involves talking without moving your lips to make it appear that the words are coming from elsewhere. It is also known as throwing your voice, though no throwing is involved. To make bilabial sounds such as /m/ and /b/ without lip movement the trick is apparently to substitute similar sounds – /n/ and /g/. If you say them fast your listeners’ brains will hopefully hear the letters you want them to – we tend to hear what we expect to hear anyway. Then again, you could just use other words without the troublesome letters. More details.

Have you tried ventriloquism?

I can sort of do it, though would need more practice to do it convincingly.

What I wonder is whether it is easier to ventriloquise in some languages or accents than in others, and whether there are many bilingual/polyglot ventriloquists who speak one language themselves and have their dummy or dummies speaking others. That might be a fun way to practise languages and interpretation skills.

Kidnap

By Simon

One of the words we discussed at the French conversation group last night was kidnap, which is enlever or kidnapper (verb) and enlèvement (noun) in French. We wondered where the English word comes from, so I thought I’d investigate.

According to the OED, kidnap originally meant “to steal or carry off (children or others) in order to provide servants or labourers for the American plantations” and came to mean “to steal (a child), to carry off (a person) by illegal force”. It is formed of kid (child) and nap (to snatch, seize).

The word kid comes from the Middle English kide/kede/kid (young goat), is thought to come from the Old Norse kið /cʰɪːð/ (young goat), from the Proto-Germanic *kiðjom. It started to be used as a slang expression for child in about the 1590s, and was considered low slang at first, but by the 19th century it was accepted in informal usage.

The word nap (to seize, catch; to arrest; to steal) is of uncertain origin. It is possibly related to the Norwegian word nappe (to tug, snatch, arrest) and the Swedish nappa (to snap, snatch). Then again, it might be related to nab (to seize, to catch and take into custody, to apprehend, arrest, to imprison).

The Welsh for kidnap is herwgipio /hɛrʊˈgɪpɪɔ/, from herw (raid, wandering) and cipio (to capture, snatch, grab). Herw also appears in herwhela (to poach) – hela = to hunt; herwlong (pirate ship); and herwr (prowler, robber, outlaw).

Nursery rhymes and computers

By Simon

Comptine /kɔ̃tin/ is the French for nursery rhyme or for a counting rhyme or song. I learnt it last night and thought I’d look into where it comes from.

According Wiktionnaire, comptine is made up of compte (count, number, account) and the suffix -ine. Compte /kɔ̃t/ comes from computus (count, number, account, calculation), from computo (to count – computer in French), from con- (suffix = with; all) and putō (to think, suppose, reckon, count, prune), perhaps from the Proto-Indo-European *pu- (to wash).

My French dictionary says that comptine refers particularly to nursery rhymes involving counting, which is reflected in its etymology. Other words for children’s songs include chansons pour enfant (songs for children) and berceuse (lullaby, cradle song, hushaby, rocking chair), which also means nursemaid, and comes from bercer (to rock, cradle, lull), which apparently comes from Gaulish.

Links
– Comptines et chansons pour enfant
– Toutes les comptines et chansons pour enfants
– Comptines.net – Paroles de Comptines et Berceuses pour enfants et bébes