Category: Welsh (Cymraeg)

Doctors and nurses

By Simon

The words doctor and nurse in English aren’t gender-specific, however many people expect doctors to be male and nurses female. As a result, the terms female doctor or lady doctor and male nurse are used to specify the gender of those who don’t fit such stereotypes.

In Welsh a doctor is meddyg and a female doctor is meddyges, while a nurse is nyrs and a male nurse is nyrs gwrywaidd. An older word for nurse is gweinyddes, which means “female attendant” and is a feminine version of gweinydd (attendant).

In Irish a doctor is dochtúir and nurse is usually banaltra (female), while banaltra fir is sometimes used for male nurses. There is also altra, which is a non-gender-specific version of nurse. The ban in banaltra comes from bean, woman / female.

How do other languages handle these words?

Celtic connections

By Simon

Apart from the odd word here and there, the vocabularies of the two living branches of the Celtic language family, Brythonic (British) and Goidelic (Gaelic), appear to bear little resemblance to each other. So far I’ve only found two words that are exactly the same in Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic: blas (taste/flavour) and glas (blue/green).

To some extent, differences in spelling disguise connections between the languages, but even taking those differences into account, only about 2% of the words appear to be related.

Here are a few other related words I’ve found:

Gaeilge
(Irish) 		Gàidhlig
(Gaelic) 		Gaelg
(Manx)		 Cymraeg
(Welsh) 		Kernewek
(Cornish)		 Brezhoneg
(Breton)		 English
capall (each) cabbyl ceffyl (margh) (marc’h) horse
gabhar gobhar goayr gafr gaver gavr goat
cath cat kayt cat kath kazh cat
cú cù coo cu ki ki dog
abhainn abhainn awin afon avon (stêr) river
muir muir mooir môr mor mor sea
agus agus as a/ac/ag hag ha/hag and
aimsir aimsir emshir amser amzer time
ainm ainm ennym enw hanow anv name
airgead airgead argid arian arghans arc’hant silver
anáil anail ennal anadl anal anal breath

Note: cú actually means hound in Irish – dog is madra. Sea is also farraige is Irish, fairge is Scottish Gaelic, and faarkey in Manx.

To find more connections between the Celtic languages, you need to go back to their earlier forms. For example, the word for true in Welsh is gwir, in Irish it’s fíor, and in Scottish Gaelic it’s fìor. These words are all thought to originate from the reconstructed form, wir or weri. Then at some point the initial w become gw in Welsh and f in the Gaelic languages.

A good place to find connections between the Celtic languages is McBain’s Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.

Word of the day – gwyddbwyll

By Simon

In Modern Welsh, gwyddbwyll means chess, (lit. “wood wisdom”), however it originally referred a different board game which is mentioned in the ancient Welsh tales of the Mabinogion.

According to this site, the original game was often played on a pegged board with a king and four princes (or defenders) against eight opponents (or raiders). The exact rules have been lost in the mists of time.

The Cornish equivalent of gwyddbwyll is goedhboell, while in Breton it’s gwezboell. The Irish word for this game is ficheall, or fidchell in Old Irish, which comes from the same root as the Welsh and means the same thing. There are more details of the Irish game of fidchell here.

The Welsh names of the chess pieces are:

Teyrn / Brenin = King
Brenhines = Queen
Castell (castle) = Rook
Esgob = Bishop
Marchog = Knight
Gwerinwr (peasant/pawn) = Pawn

Return to Brighton

By Simon

I arrived back in Brighton last night after an enjoyable week of studying and using Welsh in Nant Gwrtheyrn. There were only six others on the courses – all men – and I was the youngest. Most of the others were Welsh, or had Welsh connections, or at least make regular visits to Wales. Most of us were roughly at the same level, but there was one bloke from the Rhondda who spoke Welsh almost like a native speaker, and another who could read and write Welsh very well and had a huge vocabulary, but who couldn’t speak Welsh all that well.

A view of Nant Gwrtheyrn

We had about five hours of classes a day, which were interesting and useful. There were also a couple of organised evening activities, and an afternoon trip to Caer Gors, former home of one of Wales’ best known Welsh language authors, Kate Roberts (1891-1985), after which we had a look round Caernarfon. The rest of the time we spent chatting (mainly in Welsh), stuffing ourselves with the delicious food provided in the on-site restaurant, Caffi Meinir, and admiring the spectacular views.

Nant Gwrtheyrn is in a very isolated, beautiful and peaceful spot on the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales. It’s surrounded on three sides by mountains with the sea on the fourth side. The nearest village, Llithfaen, is three miles away up a narrow, winding and very steep road. On a clear day you can sea Anglesea, and on a very clear day you can apparently see Ireland.

A view of Nant Gwrtheyrn

Apart from a bit of rain on Thursday, the weather was fine and fairly warm, and the sun made quite frequent appearances. I was expecting a lot more of the wet stuff to be falling from the sky, so was pleasantly surprised.

There are a few more of my photos of Nant Gwrtheyrn on Flickr.

Nant Gwrtheyrn

By Simon

Tomorrow I’m off to Nant Gwrtheyrn, the Welsh Language and Heritage Centre in North Wales, where I’m going to learn some more Welsh. I’ll be there for a week and probably won’t have internet access, so won’t be able to answer your emails. I’m also going to turn off comments to prevent the usual flood of spam that inundates this blog.

In the meantime, here’s a recording of a poem in a mystery language. Can you work out which language it is? I’ll give you the answer when I return from Wales.

Word of the day – priodol

By Simon

Today’s word, priodol, means appropriate, proper or suitable in Welsh. I came across it while reading a web page about self-employment and had to look it up as I wasn’t sure what it meant in the context. I knew that the root priod had something to do with marriage, but didn’t know it also meant proper.

Example of usage:

Mae rheolau a gyflwynwyd yn Neddf Cyllid 1994 yn golygu bod angen i chi gadw’r holl gofnodion priodol bellach.
The rules introduced in the 1994 Finance Act mean that you have to keep all the appropriate records now.

There are many more examples in the Llyfrgell Owen Phrasebank.

Related words include:

priod – married, husband, wife, spouse, proper
priodi – to marry
priodas – marriage
priodasol – marital, matrimonial, married, nuptial, conjugal, connubial
priodferch – bride
priodfab – groom
priodol – proper, appropriate, intrinsic, peculiar; respective, apposite
priodoli – to attribute, ascribe, impute
priodoldeb – propriety, appropriateness
priodoledd – attribute, property

Word of the day – clustfeinio

By Simon

I came across the word clustfeinio yesterday while reading a novel in Welsh. At first I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, apart from having something to do with ears, clustiau. From the context though I was able to guess its meaning:

Wy’n clustfeinio am bob gwich a sgrech.
I’m [verbing] to every squeak and shriek.

From its position in the sentence, you can tell that clustfeinio is a verb. Can you guess what it means? The character who says this sentence is lying in bed trying to get to sleep.

Related words include:

clust – ear
clustdlws – ear-ring (lit. “ear brooch/jewel”)
clusten – (ear) lobe
clustew / clustrwm – hard of hearing (lit. “fat ear” / “heavy ear”)
clustfyddar – deaf
clustiog – eared
clustog – pillow, cushion
clustowlad – buffer-state (lit. “pillow state”)

Word of the day – pigan

By Simon

Pigan, verb = to being to rain / to start raining

Etymology: pigan comes from pig, beak, spout, to interfere

Example of usage:
Mae hi’n pigan = Mae hi’n dechrau bwrw glaw = It’s starting to rain

Related word:
piglaw – heavy rain, drizzle

I came across this word the other day while searching for another word in my Welsh dictionary and it just appealed to me. I don’t think it’s a very common word as I’ve never heard it or seen it being used.

In Chinese you can express the same idea using the particle le:

下雨 (xiàyǔ) = it’s raining, 下雨了 (xiàyǔ le) it’s just started raining

Do other languages have words with the same or a similar meaning?

Word of the day – ariandy

By Simon

I came across today’s word, ariandy, while looking for something else in one of my Welsh dictionaries, Y Geiriadur Mawr. It combines arian, silver / money, with dy, a mutated form of tŷ, house, and is an archaic word for bank, as in a place where money is kept. The normal word for bank is the loanword banc.

Another example of a word made up of native roots being replaced by a foreign loanword is cornmwg, chimney, from corn, horn and mwg smoke – the usual word for chimney is simnai.

Word of the day – twmpath

By Simon

Today’s word, twmpath (/tʊmpaθ/), is the Welsh word for a tump, hump, hummock, tussock or mound. It is also refers to a type of barn dance, which is sort of the Welsh equivalent of an Irish ceili.

The English word tump (a mound or hillock) might come from twmpath, though the dictionaries I’ve checked give it’s origin as unknown.

According to this site, there was a tradition in Wales for people gather on the twmpath chwarae (lit. “tump for playing”) or village green in the evenings to dance and play various sports, usually starting on May Day. A fiddler or harpist would sit and play on a mound in the middle of the green and people would dance around them.

Other uses of this word include twmpath gwadd, mole hill, and twmpath cyflymder or speed bump, a traffic calming measure sometimes called a ‘sleeping policeman’ in English. What are such things called in your language?