Category: Welsh (Cymraeg)

Climbing

By Simon

Yesterday I climbed Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) for the first time. It was a warm sunny day, though a bit hazy, and the views were spectacular – there are some photos on Flickr. When I say that I climbed Snowdon, what kind of activity does that conjure up for you?

I went up the Miners Track from Pen y Pass and then descended by way of the Llanberis Path. In places the Miners Track is very step and hands are needed to help you up or down, while you can walk up and down the Llanberis Path relatively easily, or even run, if you’re feeling very energetic. So no actual climbing, as in climbing up or down rock faces, was involved. Other routes up Snowdon might require that kind of climbing.

The OED defines climb as:

1. To raise oneself by grasping or clinging, or by the aid of hands and feet; ‘to mount by means of some hold or footing’ (Johnson); to creep up; to ascend, come, or go up, a perpendicular or steep place.
2. To ascend (anything steep) by hands and feet, creep up; to get to the top or summit of; to mount, scale.

It comes from the Old English climb-an, clamb (clǫmb), clumbon, clumben, which is believed to be a nasalized form of the Germanic *klîƀan (to cleave).

So I did climb in the sense that I ascended or scaled the mountain, though didn’t need to use my hands or to grasp or cling very much, and I didn’t creep up either.

Rheithgor

By Simon

I heard the word rheithgor (/ˈr̩əiθgɔr/) on Radio Cymru this morning in the context of a report on a trial, and guessed that it meant ‘jury’. The second element, gor, comes from côr (/koːr/) (choir, circle), and the first element, rheith, appears in such words as rheithfawr (greatly just), rheithiad (regulation), rheithio (to fix a law), rheithiol (established as law), and also in rheitheg (rhetoric) and rheithegydd (rhetorician). So rheith seems to have something to do with justice and law and a rheithgor could be a ‘law choir’.

Another Welsh word that includes the element côr is pwyllgor /ˈpʊɨɬgɔr/ (committee) – the pwyll part means ‘discretion; steadiness’, and a related word, pwyllo, means ‘to steady, consider, reason, reflect’ – things that committees might do.

The English word jury comes from the Anglo-Norman jure(e), from the Old French jurée (oath, juridical inquiry, inquest), from the medieval Latin jūrāta, from iūrāre (to swear), from iūs (law, duty), from the Proto-Indo-European *yAus- (ritual purity; supreme justice), which is also the root of just and justice.

The English word choir comes from the Middle English quer(e), from the Old French cuer (church choir), from the Latin chorus (a company of dancers, dance; company, band) from the Greek χορός (dance, company of dancers or singers). Chorus comes from the same root.

Sources: Y Geiriadur Mawr, A Pocket Dictionary (Welsh-English), Oxford English Dictionary, Wiktionary

The worm that turned

By Simon

cartoon worm

While working in my garden this afternoon I dug up lots of worms, so I thought it might be interesting to find out more about the word worm.

Meanings of worm (/wɜːm/ /wɝm/) include:

– a member of the genus Lumbricus; a slender, creeping, naked, limbless animal, usually brown or reddish, with a soft body divided into a series of segments; an earthworm. More widely, any annelid, terrestrial, aquatic, or marine;
– any animal that creeps or crawls; a reptile; an insect;
– serpent, snake, dragon;
– four-footed animals considered noxious or objectionable.

Some of these meanings are archaic or obsolete.

There have been many variant spellings, including wirm, wrim, wyrme, weorm, werm, werme, wurm, wurem, orm, wrm, wourme, woirme, woorme, worme, and it finally settled on worm.

Worm comes from the Old English wyrm (a serpent, snake, dragon), from the Proto-Germanic *wurmiz (serpent, worm), from the Proto-Indo-European *wrmi-/*wrmo- (worm), possibly from *wer- (to turn). *wrmi-/*wrmo- is also the root of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word gorm (blue/black), the Welsh gwrm (dusky), the Danish/Norwegian/Swedish orm (snake), the Latin vermis, which is the root of the English words vermilion and vermin, and quite a few other words in various languages.

Some interesting worm factoids

– there are some 2,700 different types of worms
– an acre of land can contain over a million worms
– Cleopatra VII made the export of worms from Egypt a capital crime as she realized the important roll they play in keeping soil fertile
– Charles Darwin studied worms for many years and concluded that they are one of the most important creatures on earth.

Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, Online Etymology Dictionary, Wikipedia, Word-Origins.com, Eartworm Farming, Worm Facts

Laa ruggyree

By Simon

Ta mee nane as daeed bleeaney d’eash jiu, as ta my voir ayns Bangor yn jerrey shiaghtin shoh. Hie shin dys cuirrey kiaull yindyssagh riyr; dee shin kirbyl ayns thie lhionney ynnydagh jiu, as hemmayd dys cuirrey kiaull elley noght. Ghow mee arrane ayns yn cuirrey kiaull riyr rish yn sheshaght chiaullee cohellooderys Bangor, agh bee mee ayns yn lught eaishtagh noght.

Breithlá

Tá mé daichead a haon bliain d’aois inniu, agus tá mo mháthair anseo i mBangor an deireadh seachtaine seo. Chuaigh muid chuig ceolchoirm iontach aréir; d’ith muid lón i dteach tábhairne áitiúil inniu, agus beidh muid ag dhul chuig ceolchoirm eile anocht. Chan mé sa ceolchoirm aréir leis an cóir pobail Bangor, ach beidh mé sa lucht éisteachta anocht.

Penblwydd

Dw i’n pedwar deg un blwydd oed heddiw, ac mae fy mam yma ym Mangor y penwythnos ‘ma. Mi aethon ni i gyngerdd wych neithiwr; mi fwyton ni ginio yn nhafarn leol heddiw, ac mi awn ni i gyngerdd arall heno. Mi ganes i yn y gyngerdd neithiwr gyda’r côr cymunedol Bangor, ond bydda i yn y cynulleidfa heno.

Noce

By Simon

Noce /nɔs/ is a French word I learnt last night meaning “wedding” (ceremony) or wedding party. Here are some examples of usage:

– être de la noce – to be (a member) of the wedding party, to be among the wedding guests
– être de noce – to be invited to a wedding
– aller à la noce de quelqun – to go to somebody’s wedding
– repas/robe/nuit de noce – wedding banquet/dress/night
– noce d’argent / d’or etc – silver/golden wedding
– fare la noce – to live it up / have a wild time
– il n’était pas à la noce – he wasn’t enjoying himself / was have an uncomfortable time
– il n’avait jamais été à pareille noce – he’d never been so happy / he was having the time of his life

Noce, sounds like the Welsh word for night nos, so when I first heard it I thought nights and not weddings were being discussed. It comes from the Latin word nuptiae (wedding/marriage), which is derived from nubere (to veil/hide) – this goes back to a Roman custom that married women wore veils. Nuptiae is also the root of the English word nuptial (to marry; to speak of a wedding; wedding), and of the French word nuage (cloud).

An alternative to noce is mariage, which can refer both to the institution of marriage and the marriage/wedding ceremony. The English word wedding comes from the Old English węddian (to wed), while marriage comes from the French mariage.

Moider

By Simon

Last night I heard the word moider for the first time and was slightly puzzled by what it meant. From the context – a friend was talking about moidering around with his mates – I guessed it meant to mess/muck about, and I wondered whether it’s related to the word mither, which is used in Cheshire, Lancashire and perhaps elsewhere and means ‘to bother’, e.g. stop mithering me!.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, mither /ˈmʌɪðə/ is a dialect word, used mainly in Northern English meaning:

1. to make a fuss; moan: oh men — don’t they mither?
2. to pester or irritate (someone).

Etymology: dates from late 17th century and is of unknown origin; perhaps related to the Welsh moedrodd (to worry, bother). Other possibile origins are the Welsh words meidda (to beg for whey) or meiddio (to dare) [source].

I can’t find any other references to moedrodd, but Y Geiriadur Mawr has mwydro, and variants moedro and moidro, which mean ‘to bewilder’.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines moider as ‘to toil’.

The World English Dictionary defines moither or moider (ˈmɔɪðə, ˈmɔɪdə) as:

1. to bother or bewilder
2. to talk in a rambling or confused manner

The Century Dictionary defines moider as:

1. To confuse; perplex; distract; bewilder.
2. To spend in labor.
3. To labor hard; toil.

Have you heard of moider or mither before?

Gwrthryfelwyr

By Simon

The other day while listening to a news report on Radio Cymru about the situation in Libya, the word gwrthryfelwyr caught my attention. It means rebels and is made up of the elements gwrth (against, counter), ryfel, from rhyfel (war), and wyr, from gwŷr (men). I’d heard the word before and knew what it meant, but hadn’t really thought about the individual parts in this way, and this lead me to thinking that the meaning and etymology of Welsh words is often easier to work out than that of English words as many of them are made up of native roots with meanings I know or can guess.

I also thought about the etymology of the rebels and realised that it actually has a similar structure to gwrthryfelwyr, though from Latin roots. I knew that the bel part had something to do with war and appears in such Latin phrases as antebellum (before the war) and postbellum (after the war), and guessed that in this context the re- prefix might mean against. I checked this and found that rebel comes from the Old French rebelle, from the Latin rebellis (insurgent, rebellious). from rebellare (to rebel, wage war against) from re- (opposite, against or again) and bellare (wage war), from bellum (war).

The Welsh prefix gwrth- appears in many Welsh words, including:

– gwrthblaid – opposition (party) [“against/counter party”]
– gwrthbrofi – to disprove, refute [“counter prove/test”]
– gwrthdyb – paradox [“counter opinion/surmise/conjecture/notion”]
– gwrthdystio – to protest [“testify against”]
– gwrthgorffyn – antibody [“counter little body”]
– gwrthneidio – to rebound [“counter jump”]

Peithiau a maip

By Simon

Recently I heard about a series of programmes on S4C (the Welsh language TV channel) presented by the naturalist Iolo Williams, in which he visits Native American communities and learns about their cultures, languages and the natural world around them. The programmes are in Welsh, apart from odd bits of English and Native American languages, and subtitles in English or Welsh are available.

In the programme I just watched, which focuses on the Lakota, Iolo uses a number of Welsh words I hadn’t heard before:

– paith (pl. peithiau) = prairie
– ci y paith (pl. cŵn y paith) = prairie dog
– meipen (pl. maip) = turnip – in this context a type of wild food found on the prairie – psoralea esculenta*
– toddi = to melt – here it is used in the context of taming wild horses

Other Welsh words for prairie include gwastatir (“level land”) and gweundir (“grass (?) land”).

The English word prairie comes from the French prairie, from the Old French praerie, from Vulgar Latin *prataria, from Latin pratum (meadow – originally “a hollow”). The existed as prayere in Middle English, but fell out of use, and then was reborrowed from French to describe the American plains, where immigrants wagons where known as “prairie schooners” [source].

*Psoralea esculenta – a herbaceous perennial plant native to prairies and dry woodlands of central North America with an edible starchy tuberous root. English names for the plant include tipsin, teepsenee, breadroot, breadroot scurf pea, pomme blanche, and prairie turnip, and the Lakota name is Timpsula [source].

Diolch i Siôn Jobbins am yr awgrym

Remembering words

By Simon

When learning a language one challenge is to memorise the vocabulary, and to be able to use it when you need it. I’ve tried a number methods to do this: repetition, flash cards, SRS, associations and so on. A method for learning individual words that works quite well for me involves making associations between the sounds of the new words and familiar words, especially if I build mental pictures to illustrate the words and their meanings. For example, a Welsh word for field is maes, which sounds like mice, so I picture a field full of mice.

Another way to remember things that I came across the other day involves giving inanimate objects character and life. The example I found discusses using this method to remember where your keys are:

[…] imbue your keys with character and life: this is my preferred gambit. Think of your keys as a living, breathing creature, and you’ll automatically know where they are.

Our brains like living things, it seems, they have more time for them.

Specifically, I deliberately experience my keys as a needy brood of motherless koala-bears on a hoop. When I drop them somewhere, my mind quickly wonders if they’re warm and comfortable, away from predators, in need of some amusing noises from their owner.

The location they’re in thus immediately gains my interest and attention, so I remember it automatically.

After reading this I started wondering whether you could do the same for words – endowing words for inanimate objects and abstract concepts with life and character might make them more memorable. You could also give masculine or feminine characteristics to nouns as appropriate. For verbs maybe you could picture conjugations as accessories – hats, scarves, gloves, bags, etc.

Snídanĕ - Czech word for breakfast

I haven’t actually tried this yet, but will give it a go and let you know if it helps.

The image on the right is a possible way to remember the Czech word for breakfast (snídanĕ) with the breve over the e filled with breakfast cereal and milk.

Have you tried this memory trick, or similar ones?