#welsh learning

Protip to dysgwyr / Welsh learners-

If you're looking for active Welsh language tags to follow on certain subjects, search for mutated forms as well. That way, more relevant posts show up.

A PLAID IFANC MEMBER WHO I AM FRIENDS WITH SUGGESTED MUSIC, BOTH FOLK AND NOT FOLK.

S'mae pawb!

This post is going to be an introduction to the genitive in Welsh. Firstly, for anyone who doesn't know (and I'm not going to treat it like some sort of cardinal sin), 'genitive' simply means the case that indicates possession. English has a genitive case and applies it to nouns and pronouns alike and it's impossible not to notice, although completely understandable to not realise you're adding cases to words for the purpose of indicating possession.

The English examples are simple:

Everyone has heard of this one. In fact, everyone uses this one. The basic rule is you add an apostrophe+s to a noun and it indicates that the noun owns something (usually the following word). There are other rules to add to simply adding ''s' to anything (and it's important you know them so if you're unsure even at all, click here and get 'em learnt) but this blog is about Welsh and getting bogged down in English is something I do every day so we're not going to dwell on them.

In another few nutshells, the word 'My' is equal to the word 'I' except the former is the possessive form of the latter. In other words, the word 'my' is the equivalent of adding a Saxon Genitive to 'I'. If you're really interested in learning all about the possessive in English, here's a good link.

There's nothing to possessives once you get the hang of them; a lot of languages are different but once the rules are learnt, they're learnt. I don't want to bring up the completely divisive issue of nature vs culture but every human on the planet (and every dog for that matter) has a perception of what it is to own something. One dog growling at another that comes too near to its bone is in effect saying, 'That my bone. Push off.' Possession is a rule that absolutely everyone understands. Language being ultimately limited as it is, there are only a number of ways of telling someone 'that's my bone.' Welsh is no less limited than any other language in indicating possession and while there's not vast swathes of information I can tell you about the Welsh genitive, there are certain aspects I find fascinating.

When you think of possession, the first thing you'd probably think of is 'mine' (if Bolshevik, ignore that sentence) and how if a bone was your bone, you'd say it was 'my bone.' But let's not jump the gun. I think that when learning Welsh, you need first to know how to describe something as someone else's in order to understand how you'd say 'my...' etc.

So how do you do that? It's easier than English and we actually see traits (although presumably unrelated) in English. Let's pick a university in the UK. I'm from Leeds so I'll say Leeds. Its official name is the 'University of Leeds' with the 'of' indicating possession of the university by Leeds, which stems from the French contribution to the English language. Alternatively (and from my experience far more commonly used) is the term 'Leeds University'. In this case, there is nothing to indicate possession. The two words are merely next to each other, yet we know that the university belongs to Leeds. Regarding it as the university 'at' Leeds helps, but ultimately, these are just two words next to each other which we understand completely and without problem regardless of any indication of possession.

This is similar to the Welsh third person possessive, although like in so many things translated to Welsh from English, the word order switches. If Leeds were in Wales, the university (in Welsh anyway) would be Prifysgol Leeds, literally 'University Leeds' in English. The difference between 'Leeds University' in English and 'Prifysgol Leeds' in Welsh is that the word order in Welsh (Noun+Noun) does indicate possession, so while many would probably translate Prifysgol Leeds to Leeds University, they could just as reasonably translate it to University of Leeds and still be correct.

This is true of pretty much all nouns in Welsh in relation to proper nouns. Here's some examples:

Bob's phone - Ffôn Bob

Josh's kitchen - Cegin Josh

Nat's dog - Ci Nat

It's easy isn't it?

Now, why did I want to tell you the third person first? It's because the first person isn't entirely straightforward when reading with English eyes. Now you know the rule (above) this should be a lot simpler.

It's important to remember that the word for 'my' in Welsh is 'fy' and as we've discussed in a much earlier post, 'fy' always causes a nasal mutation. It's perfectly reasonable therefore, to assume that to say 'My cat' you'd say 'Fy nghath' which is right, EXCEPT it's missing something you wouldn't say in English, which is the word 'i' after 'nghath'. Therefore the correct way to say 'My cat' is 'Fy nghath i'.

You can see that the 'i' which means 'I' or 'me' comes after the noun just as in the above examples 'Nat' came after 'Ci' and 'Josh' came after 'Cegin'. Unlike in the third person which only requires one word to confirm possession, the first person requires two (fy and i). Think of the first person possessive as a sandwich with 'fy' and 'i' as the bread and the noun as whatever you usually have in your sandwiches (not marmite - never marmite). The first person genitive really is the equivalent of saying 'my noun of mine'. Whether you're in the deep south or Wales you'll never feel out of place saying it.

So here's a few examples:

My dad - Fy nhad i

My mum - Fy mam i

My girlfriend/boyfriend - Fy nghariad i

It's easy as pie (as easy as my?) Anyway, that's the first person and third person singulars done and dusted. Learn them and have fun doing it. There's plenty more to get through but I'm leaving it here for now. Like I said, this was only ever going to be an introduction. I hope it's helped.

Like I said on the last vocab post, I’m still not too sure about how frequent posting vocabulary will be. By now I hope you’ve learnt all the words in the ‘Mewn Ddinas’ section and are ready to be…

You know what ‘Yn y’ means as for cefn gwlad, can you guess? Have you ever hear the Welsh national anthem? The chorus involves shouting ‘Gwlad!’ which means country. Got the picture yet? Yes? Great! No? Well I best fill in the gaps. ‘Cefn’ means back, but in this case it translates to ‘side’ as in countryside (although another way of looking at it would be the back country, which makes sense too). So of course, this section is all about being in the countryside!

I was lucky enough to spend a lot of this summer in Machynlleth, Powys, which is a town that has been dropped in the middle of Welsh mountains, fantastic scenery, next to a river, near an estuary. Aside from the fact that it’s a town, you could hardly be more in the countryside, so a lot of my inspiration for this vocab sheet has come from my time in Mach.

Sorry they’re not in any sort of order.

Print it out, learn it and very importantly remember which nouns are masculine and which are feminine!

Now, it’s recently occurred to me that you might be reading this with no knowledge of how to pronounce the words, although like I’ve said before, if you are here and you’ve read from the beginning up to this post, it’s fairly likely you’re a higher level than a beginner. For those of you who don’t have a clue how to pronounce Welsh words, here’s an alphabet with how you’d pronounce them in English:

A - as in apple

B - as in boy

C - as in car, never as in ceremony

Ch - as in loch, like you’re hawking something up from the back of your throat

D - as in dad

Dd - sounds like the ‘th’ in the word ‘the’

E - as in egg

F - as in the English letter ‘V’

Ff - as in France (hard F)

G - as in good, never as in gemstone

Ng - as in eating

H - as in hope

I - as in Isambard (like an ‘ee’ sound), also as in tin

J - as in just

L - as in land

Ll - sounds like ‘tl’ together. Try saying Tlanetli (Llanelli)

M - as in mother

N - as in November

O - as in orbit (never as in go or goo)

P - as in pedal

Ph - as in Philosophy

R - a rolled ‘r’

Rh - a rolled ‘r’ with more wind in it. Sounds very similar to R but harder

S - as in soil

T - as in Train

Th - as in the ‘th’ in theatre

U - sounds like an ‘ee’ sound

W - sounds like an ‘oo’ sound

Y - sounds like an ‘ur’ sound mostly; can sound like an ‘i’ as in ‘it’ sound too

As you’ll notice, a lot of letters are in the Welsh alphabet that aren’t in the English. The reverse is true as well. There’s no K, Q, V, X or Z in Welsh, but because Welsh is a phonetic language, it’s very easy to read and you’ll soon get used to them not being around.