Television and stinky badgers

22 July 2008 By Simon

What does television and stinky badgers have in common?

Well, there’s a kind of stink badger (Mydaus javanensis) that lives in Java, Sumatra, Borneo and the North Natuna Islands of Indonesia and which called teledu /teledu/ in Malay; sigung in Indonesian. The word teledu /tɛ’lɛdɨ/ just happens to be the Welsh word for television.

This is the stink badger:

Teledu - the Javanese Stink Badger

Found via this blog.

The word television of course comes from the Greek word τῆλε (tele), ‘far off / at a distance’, and the Latin visionem, ‘act of seeing, sight, thing seen’. Most languages call the television something similar. There a few exceptions though, including the German Fernsehen, ‘Far-see’, the Norwegian Fjernsyn, which means the same as the German; the Icelandic Sjónvarp, ‘vision’ + ‘throw’; and the Chinese 電視 [电视] (di

Word of the day – Crychydd

12 July 2008 By Simon

Picture of a grey heron / Llun crychydd glas

Today’s word, crychydd (‘krəx.ɨð) is one of the Welsh words for heron. Other words for heron include crëyr, crehyr and crŷr, which appear to be immitations of the sounds herons make. The Irish word for heron is similar – corr.

Whenever I go for a walk by the sea here in Bangor, I often see a heron or two, as well as various other kinds of birds. They are usually grey herons (crëyr glas), but I did see a white one the other day, or it might have been a white egret. I’d like to learn a bit about these birds and their names in Welsh (and English, if I don’t already know them). I’ll see if the Welsh language bookshop in town has a book on local birds the next time I’m there.

One of my Welsh dictionaries, Y Geiriadur Mawr, has a section on birds with their names in Welsh and English. Many of the names are translations of their English equivalents, e.g. aderyn du – blackbird, asgell goch – redwing, and gwylan benddu – black-headed gull. Other names are based on the sounds the birds make, their appearance, or their habits or habitats, e.g. wid-wid – rock pipit, gwidihŵ – owl, bronfraith (speckled breast) – song thrush, Harri-gwylch-dy-big (Harry wash your beak) – little grebe, aderyn yr eira (snow bird) – starling.

Bangor

23 June 2008 By Simon

I’m currently in Bangor, Gwynedd in search of a new place to live – I plan to move here soon and will be starting an MA in Linguistics at Bangor University in September.

Bangor is one of the smallest cities in the UK and is an attractive place with views across the Menai Strait to Anglesey (Ynys Môn) and along the North Wales coast. Students make up a significant proportion of the population, at least during term time, and at least half of the permanent population speak Welsh as their first language, which is one of the reasons why I chose the course in Bangor.

Welsh has now ousted Mandarin as the dominant language (apart from English) in my head. Mandarin dominated for many years, even after I left Taiwan. Now when I try to say things in languages other than Welsh, they come out partly in Welsh, or with Welsh word order, which tends to confuse people. There aren’t many people around, as far as I know who can follow a Mandarin/Welsh mixed conversation. Well, I do know one person who could.

On the train on the way here today I heard some people talking in an unfamiliar language. As I usually do, I tried to work out which language it was. At first I assumed it was Spanish or Portuguese as I saw Iberia Airlines tags on their bags and they looked Hispanic. When I listened more closely, I realised it wasn’t either of those languages, though there did seem to be a few Spanish loanwords, which made me suspect it was maybe Quechua or one of the other indigenous languages of Latin America. Unfortunately I didn’t have a recording device to hand, otherwise I could have posted a recording here to see if any of you recognised the language. I suppose I could have asked the people what language it was, but where’s the challenge in that?!

Doctors and nurses

17 June 2008 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

4 June 2008 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

28 May 2008 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

25 May 2008 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

17 May 2008 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

14 May 2008 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

25 April 2008 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.