The Welsh language is a sing song language
It’s musical and very complicated to learn.
I’m beginning to understand more than I ever thought possible
This is a product of working with more Welsh speakers both as colleagues and as patients
The secret with Welsh is that the Spoken sentences are often constructed back to front
Let me give you an example
When you want to say something like
“Good morning , sorry I am late”
The Welsh will say
“Bore da, mae’n ddrwg gen i fy mōd Yn hwyr”
Which Literally translates as
“Morning Good , it’s bad for me, the time late“
Yes complicated but it kinda makes sense after a while
I will leave you with one of the most lyrical and beautiful of Welsh Hymns
Calon Lân which means a Pure Heart
Night good!
Translation please and thank you! Will try google, but methinks it will be as puzzled as I am. :)
ReplyDeleteHugs!
Good luck with that. I don’t think I could learn another language at my age.
ReplyDeletePatty
Ah, is it "learning Welsh"? That is all I got from google. I await your assistance. Ta!
ReplyDeleteMore hugs!
The Germans make it up as they go along too.
ReplyDeleteBollocks!! (Wink, wink!)
DeleteThat's funny.
DeleteNice to see you back Vivian x
DeleteYoda speak :-)
ReplyDeleteFrom my position of complete ignorance, Welsh is an incredibly musical language. I also really like the Welsh accent.
ReplyDeleteNos da to you, John.
ReplyDeleteAnd good night to you c
DeleteOh that was beautiful! The Welsh language is very musical sounding. I have enjoyed hearing you speak on the videos that you have included occasionally here on your blog.
ReplyDeleteI have more a Yorkshire accent than a Welsh one x
DeleteI was thinking that I wish you would have read the sentence for us. I would like to hear it. I don't know how to say the name of your village. I enjoy your blog.
ReplyDeleteMy Welsh pronunciation is sadly poor deArheart
DeleteI was brought up with certain phrases, including Nos da, and Bora da, and was constantly rebuked by being called a Mochyn budr.
ReplyDeleteA dirty pig
DeleteThat's it... my mother's favourite description of me!
DeleteLovely so very wonderful.
ReplyDeleteBSL (British Sign Language) translates in a similar way. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteYes my colleague I’m working with tonight told me this , she is also a Welsh speaker x
DeleteI have a dear English friend who loves Wales and has spent his life (he is 70 now) learning Welsh on his frequent visits - he is still not fluent.
ReplyDeleteKatherine Jenkins has a fine pair of lungs on her.
ReplyDeleteStop it
DeleteI've been attempting to learn Welsh for over a year, and you are right John, it is worth the effort but a complicated language when the first letter of a word keeps changing depending on its context.
ReplyDeleteIt's Calon Lan John - a nurse's understandable slip?
ReplyDeleteTee hee
DeleteWelsh was my first language. I remember being taught English at home before going to school - essential. I did 'O' level Welsh too, but haven't spoken it for years.
DeleteMy husband is a Londoner, and used to have great difficulty with pronounciation - but I've coached him well!
I would enjoy trying to learn the language if I lived there. It has a mystical sound. (And I remember that from hearing Tom Jones speak a bit every week on American television.)
ReplyDeleteBeautiful...a happy, honest, and pure heart; that will do for me. Bore da, John.
ReplyDeleteYes of any hymn I know this one has the loveliest message
DeleteWhen we lived on Anglesey I went to night school to learn Welsh. It is such a hard language to learn. Although I was never very good at it, I enjoyed the experience. My son was 13 at the time and he picked it up a treat and learned a lot from school and from playing with local children. I always had the notion that if I was going to live in Wales then I would make an effort and learn the language. I used to play a tape I got from the library and listened to this for months before we moved to Anglesey.
ReplyDeleteWell done that woman
DeleteMy nans first language was welsh. I loved listening to her talk to her sisters on the telephone for hours on a Sunday. Happy memories.
ReplyDeleteShe used to try and teach me when I was a nipper. To my regret I was never very interested In learning the language myself and all I remember are the numbers one to ten. When she was dying she only spoke welsh to me and I so wish I knew what she was saying.
I have found that it’s too much of a trial if you try to learn it, absorbing it is much easier
DeleteI learned Welsh in the 70s..it depends on how you approach it.. basically phonetic...so you learn the alphabet first... mutations come naturally as that is how they developed. The word order makes sense.take, in English, big red apple. If you stop after big, or red...what are you talking about?😄 So Afal first makes sense!! Da Iawn John, daliwch ati!! Xx
ReplyDeleteThe mutations always confused me in school
DeleteI've memorised how to say 'Merry Christmas' in Welsh (probably badly).
ReplyDeleteNadolig llawen
DeleteLove that tune...Nos da!
ReplyDeletePrehawn da now
DeleteAfter being here for just over seven years we have improved a lot on understanding some things and our pronunciations have improved slightly, but it is a hard language to learn unless you are completely submerged in it. We hoped to go to classes, but that never came about due to Alan working away so much, and now I am leaving Wales so it really doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteAr ôl bod yma am ychydig dros saith mlynedd rydym wedi gwella llawer ar ddeall rhai pethau ac mae ein ynganiadau wedi gwella rhywfaint, ond mae'n iaith anodd ei dysgu oni bai eich bod o dan y dŵr yn llwyr. Roeddem yn gobeithio mynd i ddosbarthiadau, ond ni ddigwyddodd hynny erioed oherwydd bod Alan yn gweithio i ffwrdd cymaint, ac yn awr rwy'n gadael Cymru felly does dim ots mewn gwirionedd.
DeleteI hope your time up the Conwy valley haven’t been too much of a disappointment x
DeleteI've loved most of it, the people and the countryside have been amazing. It's only Alan's inability to commit to the lifestyle that he said he wanted that is driving me back to my home county.
DeleteWelsh was my great-grandmother's first language. I think I only heard her speak it once, no one else understood a word, I think she was telling us all where to go, how to get there, and why we should all go away and leave her alone.
ReplyDeleteI remember your stories about her
DeleteI like that.I asked my mum once if I may have been Welsh in a previous life as she knew nothing of the place I recall.It seems I had a vivid dream as a child that I was at a large outdoor area with lots of benches and a wooden platform facing-people had congregated wearing Traditional costume-I feel a bit spooked about it really.Oddly my mum and her brothers have Welsh names but she didn't know why x
ReplyDeleteThat’s why you are drawn to going gently lol
Delete-and you are irresistible John x
DeleteLooking at the title of your post (I'm embarrassed to say) I just thought your keyboard got stuck. That shows you how much I know. I did enjoy the hymn, quite a lot actually.
ReplyDeleteUnlike most hymns it reads like a poem and has some lovely sentiment
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ReplyDeleteI didn't know that -- about word order in Welsh being "back to front" compared to English. It's an intriguing language. The spelling looks WAY complicated.
ReplyDeleteYour voice in videos sounds Welsh to me, so I thought you were born Welsh, until I saw you referring to Sheffield as your hone town. So I surmise you were born in Sheffield but have picked up somewhat of a Welsh accent. Correct?
ReplyDeleteNope...my fault Andrew
DeleteI always refer to Sheffield as my hometown but only out of choice
For I have lived in the city longer than anywhere else
I was born in st Asaph only a few miles west of Trelawnyd
My mum forbade my Nan from teaching me welsh when I was little. She said she was worried thatI'd be taught swear words, but my Nan said it was because she had it in her head she was middle class & English, having been part of the first grammar school draft in 1944.
ReplyDeleteIt's still something I'm trying to do, in part by watching Garddio a Mwy, and my Hinterland dvd's.
Welsh is a beautiful language, Wales is known for it's many choirs and the sound speaks for it's self I don't need to understand the words to appreciate the sound and language. So many languages have been lost but their is a resurgence and a new pride happening to teach children at a young age to speak their first language as a second language at school, maybe backwards but it's a good start.
ReplyDeleteI take Scottish Gaelic classes - which are difficult enough but I have also taken a few classes in Welsh. My first teacher told us that if we weren't spitting most of the time then we weren't pronouncing things properly! :-)
ReplyDeleteI just love hearing Welsh spoken. I also remember my mother calling Cro a mochyn budr (frequently). Welsh was our grandparents first language and I wish mother had learnt it and passed it on to me. The only word I was taught (by an uncle was the full version of Llanfair PG - quite difficult to slip into a conversation.
ReplyDeleteMy parents had a cottage on the Old Racecourse above Oswestry and I remember staying there with my father and catching the bus into Oswestry with everyone chatting away in Welsh.
Bore da, John! When I lived in LDN, I had a colleague who was a fluent Welsh speaker. She tried to teach me words/phrases, but I failed to pick any of it up. Youtube vids are of no help either to those of us who, sadly, live far away from lovely Cymru.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post🥰😍😘😍😘
ReplyDeleteភ្នាល់បាល់អនឡាញ