Category: Welsh (Cymraeg)

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?

Word of the day – Lloegr

By Simon

The Welsh name for England is Lloegr (/ɬɔigr/). The etymology of this name is a mystery. According to this site, it first appeared as Lloegyr in an early 10th century prophetic poem called Armes Prydain. A variant of the name, Lloegrwys, or “men of Lloegr”, was in use before then and more common. In early poetry, the names used for the English included Eingl (Angles) and Iwys (Wessex-men) – they are called Saeson (Saxons) in modern Welsh. Some scholars believe that Lloegr originally referred to the kingdom of Mercia, and eventually came to mean the whole of England.

There’s a thread on this forum in which a number of possible etymologies of Lloegr are discussed. Here are some of them:

  • it comes from the Middle English name for England, Loegres
  • it comes from Legorencis Civitas, the Roman name for Leicester, which was probably derived from a local Celtic name
  • it means the “lost land(s)”
  • it’s named after Locrinus, the son of Brutus (from Geoffrey of Monmouth)

More details: http://www.old-north.co.uk/Holding/celt_lloegr.html

Peeling the library

By Simon

Today’s word, library, comes from the Old French librairie, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium, ‘chest for books’, from liber (genetive of libri), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h) – ‘to strip, to peel’.

In French the word librarie means bookshop. A French library is a bibliothèque, which comes via the Latin bibliothēca, from the Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothêkê), ‘a place to store books’, which breaks down into βίβλος (biblos), ‘book’, and θήκη (thêkê), ‘chest’.

Variations on the theme of bibliothèque are used in a number of other languages, including:

Dutch – bibliotheek
German – Bibliothek
Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothiki)
Italian/Portuguese/Spanish – biblioteca
Russian – библиотека (biblioteka)

In Welsh, a library is a llyfrgell, from llyfr, ‘book’ and cell, ‘cell’, while in Irish it’s leabharlann, from leabhar, ‘book’ and lann (not sure of it’s meaning*). In Chinese, a library is 圖書館 [图书馆] (túshūguăn) = ‘map book house’.

It seems that the word library, or something like it, is not used in it’s English senses in many languages. The only ones I can find are Sesotho and Tswana (laeborari), Tsonga (layiburari) and Venda (laiburari), which appear to be loanwords from English. The Basque word for library, liburutegia, might possibly have Latin or Greek roots.

[Addendum] *lann in Irish is an archaic/obsolete word that means floor, enclosure or church. It comes from the Old Irish lann (building, house, land, plot, plate), from the Proto-Celtic *landā ((open) space, land), from the Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (land, heath). It is cognate with the Welsh word llan (church, parish, monastery, yard, enclosure, village), the Spanish landa (plain), and the English words land and lawn [source].

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionnaire, Yawiktionary

Back to Brighton

By Simon

I arrived back in Brighton yesterday afternoon after a week in the Czech Republic and Germany, which was great fun.

Prague was stunning and well worth another visit – the day and a bit I had there wasn’t really enough to take it all in. August is apparently a better time to visit, as it tends to get really busy in September and October.

During the first few days of cycling it rained quite a bit and was also quite windy. We also went along some busy roads through areas with a fair amount of heavy industry. Fortunately the weather and scenery improved later on during the week and we had a very enjoyable ride along the Elbe, mainly on well-maintained cycle paths. The towns we passed through or stayed in were attractive and picturesque; the food was plentiful, quite tasty and reasonably priced; and the people we met were generally friendly and welcoming.

Explore cycling group at the Zwinger Palace in Dresden, Germany, September 2007

There were 12 others in the group I travelled with, most from the UK, but also a couple of Canadians and an Australian. We ranged in age from 30something to 60something and got on well together. We also had a Polish tour leader, who rode with us, and a Polish driver, who took our luggage from hotel to hotel. Our tour leader spoke good English and a bit of German. He managed to communicate with people in the Czech Republic mainly in Polish with bits of Czech mixed in. The driver spoke Polish and some English, and while he couldn’t understand much Czech, he could understand Slovak quite well.

I used my Czech at every opportunity. Only one Czech person commented on this, asking if I was Czech. Everybody else just talked Czech to me and I did my best to understand them. I also tried out the few Polish phrases I know on our tour leader, and learned a bit more from him. In Germany I tried to speak German to people and found that those who could speak English often did so with me, even if I continued speaking German to them.

I picked up quite a few new Czech words from signs and menus – when you come across them in context every day, they soon sink in. The sight, feel, smell and taste of the food also helps me remember the menu words.

There were two native Welsh speakers in the group and I talked to them a bit in Welsh. They told me that I speak Welsh well with a good accent, and were impressed that my Welsh is self-taught. In 2003 while I was on holiday in northern Portugal, I met some Welsh speakers, but at that time I couldn’t have more than a very limited conversation. Since then I’ve been determined to become fluent in Welsh, and seem to be making good progress.

Word of the day – cwtsh

By Simon

cwtsh [ku:tS] = to hug; to cuddle; to kiss; to lie down; a safe place; a cupboard/space under stairs; a scuttle (for coal); snug; cosy; nice and warm; a kiss.

It comes from the Welsh word cwtch, which originally meant a cupboard or cubbyhole, but later acquired the extra meanings to lie down; a cuddle or hug. It was adopted into Welsh from the Middle English couche, a resting or hiding place, which comes from the French coucher, to lie down; to sleep.

Examples of usage:

I just want to go and cwtch him = I just want to go and hug him.
– a comment apparently made by Elizabeth Taylor about Richard Burton

Give me a cwtsh = Give me a hug

This word is an example of Wenglish, a mixture of Welsh and English spoken by many people in Wales, especially in south Wales. It’s first recorded use in English was in the 1920s according to this page. It also the most popular word in Wales, according to this report. I heard being used in a song on Radio Cymru today. It’s a song I’ve heard quite a few times before, and now I finally know what it’s about.

Riviera Lloegr / The English Riviera

By Simon

A photo of Paignton beach and pier

The towns of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham in the county of Devon in the south west of England are marketed collectively by the local tourist board as ‘The English Riviera‘. Their website offers provides information in a number of languages – the usual suspects like French, German, Italian and Spanish, and also Dutch, Polish, Chinese and Japanese. Recently they’ve had part of the site translated into Welsh – a first for English holiday resorts, according to this article.

A spokesman for the English Riviera Tourist Board said,

“We are a popular destination for visitors from Wales. The Welsh language should be used more on publicity like this in England. It is a UK language.

The board’s director, who used to be in charge of tourism in Anglesey, doesn’t speak Welsh herself, but has a fondness and commitment to preserving the language.

There are also plans to provide downloadable MP3 walking tours for the area in Welsh.

Finger names

By Simon

Finger names

When chatting with some Japanese friends today, the subject of finger names came up for some reason – specifically what the different fingers are called in Japanese and English. It took quite a while to establish which finger corresponded to which name – to make this clear, I found a picture of a hand, added labels and uploaded it to my site.

This is what the fingers are called in those languages:

拇指 (boshi) / 親指 (oyayubi) lit. “thumb/parent finger” = thumb
人差し指 (hitosashiyubi) = lit. “person offering finger” = first finger / index finger
中指 (nakayubi) = middle finger
薬指 (kusuriyubi) = lit. “medicine finger” = third finger /ring finger
小指 (koyubi) = lit. “little finger” = fourth finger / little finger / pinky

In Latin the fingers are named thus:

Thumb = Polex
First finger = Demonstratus (pointer)
Second finger = Impudicus (gesticulates)
Third finger = Annularis (ring)
Fourth finger = Auricularis (removing wax from ear)

Their names in Welsh are as follows:

Thumb = bawd
First finger = bys troed (foot finger)
Second finger = bys canol (middle finger)
Third finger = bys y fodrwy (ring finger)
Fourth finger = bys bach (little finger)

and Irish they’re:

Thumb = ordóg
First finger = corrmhéar (odd finger)
Second finger = méar fhada (long finger)
Third finger = méar fáinne (ring finger)
Fourth finger = lúidín

What about in your language?

Blog newydd / nua

By Simon

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was thinking of starting a new blog to practice my the languages. Well I’ve finally made up my mind and have created one – Rywsut-rywfodd. I plan to write everything in Welsh and Irish for now, and might write in other languages from time to time.

The title means “somehow or other”, as in “somehow or other I will become fluent in Welsh and Irish, and as many other languages as possible”. The subtitle – meddyliau hap yn y Gymraeg / smaointe fánacha as Gaeilge – means “random thoughts in Welsh / random thoughts in Irish”. I hope to write frequently – this probably won’t be every day though. I might even have a go at audioblogging as well.

When writing a recent post, it struck me how few words Welsh and Irish have in common. The only one that stands out in that particular post is blasus/blasta (tasty). Most of the others are borrowings from English.

I believe this is the world’s first bilingual Welsh/Irish blog. I might be mistaken of course – if there are others out there, I’m sure you’ll let me know. What’s the most unusual combination of languages you’ve come across on a blog or website?