Plan B Forum

Cr

Hŵre!


The Welsh government has said it wants to increase the number of Welsh speakers to a million by 2050. The plans irritated some anti-Welsh detractors, who seem to believe the language is only spoken when English people walk into a Welsh pub. With our help, you, too, can scare monoglots in your area! Here are some Welsh words and phrases (with pronunciation) that you might find useful.

Shw’mae (shoo my)
Starting strong, a simple: “Hello, how are you doing?”

Croeso i Gymru (croy-soh ee Gum-ree)
“Welcome to Wales!” Never let it be said the Welsh aren’t welcoming. A favourite on novelty tea towels.

Dros ben llestri (dr-oss behn thl-ess-tree)
Its literal meaning is “over the dishes”, but it means over the top. You know, like when someone gets really angry about bilingual Welsh road signs.

Ych-a-fi (uh-ch ah vee)
“Yuck!” Use it when your Tinder date tells you all Welsh people are stupid.

Chwyrligwgan (choo-url-ee-goo-gan)
The Welshest word on the planet. It means “whirling” or “merry-go-round”. Use it when told for the umpteenth time that Welsh has no vowels – then point out it has more vowels than English does.

Meicrodon (meik-ro-don)
Let’s put an end to this once and for all: “popty ping” is not microwave in Welsh. It is not a thing. It is a joke. If you do need to heat up some traditional cawl, be sure to put it in your meicrodon.

Iechyd da (yeah-ch-id dah)
“Cheers!” A good thing to say just before downing your fifth pint of Brains when England wins the rugby.

Smwddio (smooth-eeo)
Some Welsh words just make more sense – such as smwddio, which means “ironing”. Because what do you do when you iron clothes? You SMOOTH them – just as it sounds.

Hiraeth (heer-eye-th)
A word with no direct English translation. It means a longing for a home, or a time that felt like home. This isn’t homesickness, it’s a deep yearning for somewhere that may not quite exist as you remember it. Remind us again why English is supposedly superior?

Cer i grafu (cehr ee grah-vee)
The perfect phrase to deploy the next time someone tells you Welsh is a made-up language. It pretty much means: “My good fellow, you are clearly an idiot, but I wish you good day. Oh, and by the way, all languages are technically made up.”

Another few interesting facts about Welsh:

-It predates English by 600 years
-120,000 people speak it in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland
- It used to have k and v in the alphabet, but when the printing press came to Wales, it used an English typeset and k and v were used far more frequently than in English, so they had to be replaced with c and f, which made things more complicated.
- It has three words for internet, four for butterfly, and four for highlighter.
- Welsh has never had more than 850,000 speakers
- It has single words for 'the day after tomorrow', 'the day before yesterday' and 'three days from now'. And interestingly, 'female suicide bomber'.
- It still, for some reason, seems to annoy monoglot English speakers that it exists.
- Jellyfish in Welsh is 'cont y môr'.

Remind us again why English is supposedly superior?

The Welsh government has said it wants to increase the number of Welsh speakers to a million

We can estimate that there are definitely above 1.5 billion speakers of English globally. In 2015, out of the total 195 countries in the world, 67 nations have English as the primary language of 'official status'. Plus there are also 27 countries where English is spoken as a secondary 'official' language.

We can estimate that there are definitely above 1.5 billion speakers of English globally. In 2015, out of the total 195 countries in the world, 67 nations have English as the primary language of 'official status'. Plus there are also 27 countries where English is spoken as a secondary 'official' language.

You have to love language that makes w a vowel....I would think she had some Welsh in her family.

dales wrote:

We can estimate that there are definitely above 1.5 billion speakers of English globally. In 2015, out of the total 195 countries in the world, 67 nations have English as the primary language of 'official status'. Plus there are also 27 countries where English is spoken as a secondary 'official' language.

Would that include the United States?

MajGenl.Meade wrote:

You have to love language that makes w a vowel....I would think she had some Welsh in her family.

That's also true of many double ewes

dafad da yw dafad shaggy

MajGenl.Meade wrote:

You have to love language that makes w a vowel....I would think she had some Welsh in her family.

That's also true of many double ewes

BoSoxGal wrote:I learned that word Hiraeth recently; it is now my favorite word in any language, I think it's the most beautiful word in existence.

eta: Is it proper to capitalize it mid-sentence, or not?

Sue U wrote:

MajGenl.Meade wrote:

You have to love language that makes w a vowel....I would think she had some Welsh in her family.

That's also true of many double ewes

Ewes have Welsh in their families? I wouldn't have thought it possible, but maybe given enough attempts?

Gob wrote:

BoSoxGal wrote:I learned that word Hiraeth recently; it is now my favorite word in any language, I think it's the most beautiful word in existence.

eta: Is it proper to capitalize it mid-sentence, or not?

Nope, small "h" mid sentence.


It's something I have suffered for teh last 5 years, but am now making plans to cure it.