Category: Welsh (Cymraeg)

Languages and jobs in Spain

By Simon

According to an article I found the other day, a knowledge of languages is required for 27% of jobs in Spain, and the language most in demand is English. So if you speak English and Spanish and would like to work in Spain, there should be plenty of jobs you could apply for.

The article, which is based on information from Infoempleo, a site where you kind find jobs in Spain, also shows that French, German, Italian and Portuguese are in demand in Spain, although to a much lesser extent than English.

The article also mentions that 28% of jobs in the Basque country require a knowledge of Basque, that 13% of jobs in Catalonia require Catalan (this seems quite a low figure given the strength of the language), and that 10% of jobs in Galicia and Valencia require knowledge of the local languages.

I don’t have stats for how many jobs in Wales require a knowledge of Welsh, but I do know that Welsh is needed for many jobs in the public sector.

New Welsh news website

By Simon

I discovered an interesting new Welsh language news website today – Golwg 360 – which lets you choose what type of news you want to read, and the way it’s displayed. You can also choose to see news from different areas of Wales.

Other Welsh language news sites include the BBC, which includes local, national and international news and Radio Acen. There are also local news sites such as Newyddion Gwent, Menter Iaith Blaenau Gwent, Menter Patagonia, Menter Caerdydd and Menter Iaith y Gogledd.

Mentrau Iaith (Language Initiatives) are local groups that help communities to increase and expand their use of Welsh.

Accents

By Simon

I went down to Cornwall for my sister’s wedding a few days ago and heard some interesting English accents on the way. While waiting on Bristol station, for example, I heard some people talking in unfamiliar accents that might have been Bristolian. At first I wasn’t sure what language they were speaking – it certainly didn’t sound like English. After listening to it a bit more I realised that it was English after all, but I had to listen for carefully to make out what they were saying. It sounded very fast with a lot of elision.

Have you ever heard someone talking in what sounds like a foreign language only to realise later that it’s actually a language you know?

The announcements on railway stations in the UK are usually in RP English which has been pre-recorded and is then spliced together as necessary. So the way the Cornish place names were pronounced by the station announcements sounded quite different to the way they were pronounced by the Cornish conductor on the train. I really like Cornish accents and acquired bits of one myself while I was there, even though I only stayed for a long weekend.

BBC Voices has examples of Cornish and Bristol accents, though none of the recordings sound like the accents I heard on Bristol station, so maybe the people were from somewhere else.

Yesterday I went the dentist, and while I was chatting to the dental hygienist she detected a Welsh accent in my English and switched to Welsh. So we continued talking in Welsh and she was surprised when I told her that I’m not a native speaker as she’d assumed. Apparently I have a mid-Wales accent in Welsh.

Word of the day – cuddle

By Simon

Cuddle is an example of a false friend or cognate – it has one meaning in English (to hold (sb or sth) close; a close embrace) and one in Welsh (a hiding place). The pronunciation is different in each language: in English it’s /ˈkʌd.ḷ/ and in Welsh it’s /ˈkɨðlɛ/ or /ˈkɪðlɛ/.

The English word is a variant or cull or coll (to embrace,) which possibly comes from the Middle English couthelen from couth (known).

The Welsh word comes from cudd (hiding, concealment, hiding place; concealed, hidden) and lle (place).

Related words include:
cuddfa / cuddfan – hiding place, retreat, hoard
cuddiad – concealment
cuddiedig – hidden, concealed
cuddio – to hide, cover, bury
cuddiwr – hider
cuddlen – curtain, veil
cuddserch – fondness, affection
cuddswyddog – detective

Word of the day – ieithgi

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered a Welsh term that describes me, and many of you, perfectly – ieithgi [‘ɪəiθgi] (lit. “language dog/hound”), which refers to someone who is very keen on languages, i.e. a linguaphile. There are also some cool Welsh language games on the BBC website under that name, which where I found it.

Are there equivalent words for ieithgi (pl. ieithgŵn) in other languages?

Word of the day – morglawdd

By Simon

In Welsh morglawdd is the word for a tidal barrage (lit. “sea bank, dyke, earthwork or hedgerow”). I heard this word during a discussion on Radio Cymru of plans to build such a barrage across the Severn Estuary and I just liked the sound of it.

The plans are opposed by many environmental groups who prefer an alternative proposal to build an artificial reef or greigres artiffisial, which would cost less, produce more power, and would have less environmental impact.

There are more details of the project on the BBC website in English and Welsh.

Linguistic research

By Simon

I did some research on grammatical gender for my bilingualism class today which was similar to the experiment I tried out here last week.

The victims participants were all native speakers of Welsh and we asked them to assign male or female voices to inanimate objects, some of which are usually associated with men – (beard, hammer, screwdriver); some are usually associated with women (brooch, dress, needle); while others are semantically neutral (clock, table, television). We were trying to see whether they would be guided by the semantic or Welsh grammatical gender, and in most cases they went with the semantic gender, except for the neutral objects, for which some of them followed the Welsh genders.

Apart from the assignment of genders, I found it interesting that most of the participants learnt Welsh first and only started learning English from the age of 4 or 5, i.e. when they started school. This is quite common in this part of Wales. We also asked them estimate the percentage of Welsh and English they use. Some said they use both languages equally, others use Welsh far more than English -up to 90% of the time.

Word of the day – rhewlif

By Simon

The Welsh word rhewlif was mentioned during Iolo Willams’ programme, Byd Iolo, on Radio Cymru yesterday. At first I wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, but then I realised the word was a compound of rhew (frozen) and llif (flood) and guessed that it meant glacier. He was in Patagonia at the time, so the context helped. It’s great when you can work out what a word means without having to look it up.

Another Welsh word for glacier is afon iâ (ice river). The equivalent in Irish is oighearshruth (ice river/flow) and in Chinese it’s 冰川 (bīng chuān) – ice river.

The English word glacier comes from the France glacier, which is apparently from Savoy dialect word glacière (moving mass of ice) and is related to glace (ice).

Word of the day – poc

By Simon

In Welsh a poc (/pok/) or pocyn (/’pokɪn/), is a kiss, however this word is rarely used in everyday speech. The more common word for kiss is cusan (/’kɪsan/) or sws (/sʊs/) and ‘to kiss’ is cusanu.

When I came across the word poc while looking for something else in the dictionary, it immediately reminded me of the Irish word for kiss – póg (/po:g/) and I assumed that they came from the same root. At first I thought the root was a ancient Celtic word, but have since discovered, via MacBain’s Dictionary, that both words come from the Latin pâcem, “the kiss of peace”, a part of the Mass.

There are similar words for kiss in the other Celtic languages: pòg in Scottish Gaelic, paag in Manx and pok in Breton.

Word of the day – cofrestru

By Simon

Today I went up to Bangor Uni to start the process of registering (cofrestru) as a student. I’ve now officially accepted the offer of a place – the letter of offer was sent to me in June, but it seems to have got lost in the post. So I went to the registry (cofrestrfa) to pick up a copy, as well as various other forms that need filling in. Registration (cofrestru) doesn’t actually happen until the end of next month though.

The word cofrestru is a combination of cof, memory, mind, and rhestru, to list, make a list, which comes from rhestr, list, rank, row. Related words include rhestrog, rowed, in rows; and rhestrol, ordinal.