29 Fun Facts About Welsh Language and Culture You Need to Know (stream highlights)

00:00 1: Are you Welsh, or are you Welsh?
00:35 2: 'National' languages of the UK
00:49 3: How to jump telephone queues
01:19 4: Bilingual companies
03:50 5: Use your computer in Welsh?
04:22 6: Where do penguins come from?
04:35 7: Welsh in Middle-Earth
05:26 8: The Knight of North Wales
06:05 9: Glasgow isn't really Scottish??
06:34 10: Welsh names everything differently
07:00 11: How does Welsh name places?
07:53 12: Latin but unrecognisable
08:25 13: I'm gonna call a bee a bee
09:17 14: 'Ch' is one letter
10:03 15: Why is Welsh spelling so funky?
11:21 16: They look at you weird
11:40 17: Patagonia
13:15 18: Why Welsh numbers are the best
14:04 19: Capital of North Wales
14:37 20: What are Welsh huskies called?
15:12 21: Our collective language
15:43 22: The female dentist
17:01 23: Who did it?
17:55 24: Temptations of prescriptions
18:15 25: I sing the piano
18:27 26: Fingers of the feet
18:55 27: Months in Welsh
21:09 28: Best free way to learn Welsh
21:29 29: First Netflix series in Welsh

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[jacobparry]

Resident Welsh explainer here to tell people why the Welsh alphabet/orthography is a bit weird if you don't speak the language.

So, in middle and Early modern Welsh, the alphabet looked something like this:
A B C/K Ch D Dh F V G H I L Ll M N O P Ph R S T Th U W Y.
The modern version: A B C Ch D Dd Ff F G Ng* Ngh* H I J* L Ll M Mh* N Nh* P Ph R Rh S T Th U W Y.
(Welsh has no regulatory board, so the letters with an asterisk aren't counted by some).
When the printing press came along and people like William Salusbury started printing books, by law, he had to go to London to print his books. The printing presses in that city were 'set to English', so to speak. So they only had a certain number of each letter to print with, and the numbers were based on the frequency of those letters as they were used in English.
So, when William Salusbury went to London, he was told, "[Use] C for K, because the printers haue not so many as the Welsh requireth, ”.
And so C replaced K in the Welsh alphabet. F replaced V, and so that F didn't represent both V and F, they used a double F to represent the F sound in Off.
Because there weren't enough Hs, they changed Dh to Dd.
And so on.
In middle Welsh, U was used to represent the sound in English Kit, and the Oo sound. So to differentiate the two, they started using W for the oo and wuh sound, and U for the kit sound.

Basically, the reason Welsh looks the way it does is because of a lack of printing presses in Wales itself, and because the grammarians and poets wanted as many sounds to be represented by 1 letter, or as few as possible.

So, a quick little guide:

* A as in English: Cat, Matt, Father
Welsh examples (not translations of the above) :
Angen (need), Taflu (to throw), Cân (a song)

*E as in English: End, friend (long Ê= the a in Care)
Welsh e.g. methu (fail), Gwerthu (sell), Gwên (smile)

* I as in English: Sweet, beat, heave
Welsh e.g. Isel (low), gorllewin (west), tîm (team)
Also: I can make the sound of the English Y in Yes, Yellow
Welsh e.g. Iesu (Jesus), Iaith (language)

* O as in English: Gone, wrong, horn
Welsh e.g. Ogof (cave), Gorsedd (throne), Côr (choir)

*U as in English: Kit, hit, pit (the long U doesn't exist in English)
Welsh e.g. Uchel (high), Urddas (honour), Cytûn (agreed upon)

*W as in English Cool, rule, pool,
Welsh e.g. Gwthiad (a tackle), Bws (bus), Cŵn (dogs),
Also as in English: Water, wait, wire
Welsh e.g. Wedi (past tense marker), Weithiau (sometimes)

*Y as in English: Run, fun, come
Welsh e.g. Cymru (Wales), Tynnu (pull), Mynyddau (mountains)
Also as in English Kit, Fit, Wynne, Win:
Welsh e.g. Gwyn (White), Hyn (this), Syn (suspect)

Consonants:

B as in Bet, never doubt or debt
Bryn, Berwi

C as In Can, could, never science, cell, cello
Cymru, Cân

Ch as in Scottish Loch or Scouse book, chicken, never as in Church or Mach one.
Chwaer, Chwilen

D as in Do, don't
Deg, Dal

Dd as jn the th in The, This, never as in Ruddy, Buddy
dydd, hydd

F as in Of, very, voice
Ff as in Off, fair, feel

G as in Goal, go, never gell, giant
Garth, Gwely

H as in House, horse, never as in hour
Haul, Hoffi

J as in the G in engine, and the j in joke
Jam, injan

L as in Label, Like
Label, Celyn

Ll, never as jn Lolly, fully. Place tongue jn position to pronounce L sound, move tongue slightly to either side of mouth and try to hiss.
Llew, Llywelyn

M as in Make, mum
Mam, maeth

N as in No, never
Neidr, Na

P as in Price, proud
Pen, pryd


Ph as in Physics, philosophy
Ei phen, a phryd

R - rolled
Torri, Roedd

Rh aspirated R (think of it like h+r)
Rhedeg, Rhaid

S as in Same, Side, never as in Fusion, Dogs.
Si, Saith
If followed by an I and another vowel, e.g. Siarad, then the S and i make a Sh sound (sharad)

T as in Tent, To, never glottal like in Bohle (bottle), waher (water)

Th as in English Thin, Thick.

Bonus fun fact: some writers used X for Ch and ð for dd. Wish we broght these back👀

[nineel]

Welsh, mid Wales. I feel regretful that I decided to be a rebellious, "fight the power" idiot in school and didn't properly engage with Welsh when it would have been the best time for me to learn it. Beyond the basic phrases and words, place names, letters etc I can barely have a child level of conversation. Now I'm older I really understand why it's important to learn the language of my heritage and I'm working towards becoming fluent.

Loved the video, I'll be sticking around!

[cymro]

20:04 Hydref dreives from 'Hydd bref' - 'Hydd' is Stag 🦌, and 'bref' derives from 'brefi' - the very audible bellowing noise that the Stag makes ( during autmn).

Hydref - Stag rutting month

The names of the months in Welsh make a lot more sense when one realises that they corresponded to definite beginning, mid and end points of the four seasons.

*Winter* ❄️
The season of winter began on November the 1st and ended on January the 31st, the mid point of that winter season would be December 21st, the shortest ( and darkest) day.

*Spring* 🌼
The three month season of spring began on February 1st , mid point March 21st and ended April 31 st.

*Summer* ☀️
The season of Summer began on May 1st, peaked on June 21st ( the longest day )and ended on July 31st.

*Autumn* 🍂
The season of Autumn began on August, with September 21st the mid point and ending on October 31st - before returning to the season of winter once again.

Tellingly, in the Welsh language, the last day of the season of Autumn, the 31st of October is known as 'Nos calan gaeaf' ( Winter's eve night) - more popularly known as Halloween.

I provide a rough translation of some of the Welsh month names in their seasonal sequence when applicable:

*Winter / Gaeaf* ❄️

*November /Tachwedd* 'Slaughter month' - when you'd kill some of your livestock for winter)

*December* / *Rhagfyr* from 'Rhagfyri ' to shorten ( when daylight hours shortened)

*January / Ionawr* (Latinised influence)


*Spring /Gwanwyn* 🌼
February/ Chwefror ( don't know sorry)

March/ Mawrth ( Latinised influence)

April / Ebrill ( Latinised influence)

*Summer* / *Haf* ☀️

May/ Mai ( Latinised influence)

June / Mehefin , 'hefin: from 'Haf' Summer month)

July / Gorffenaf 'gorffen haf' ( literally, 'Summer end' month - the end of the summer season)

*Autmn* / *Hydref* 🍂
August/ Awst ( Latinised influence)

September/ Medi ( harvest month - when the crops were harvested, fruits were ripe)
October/ Hydref ( 'Hydd bref' - 'Stag bellowing month' - the name was made from observations, Stags do actually 'rutt' - breed and mate, at this time of year )


Sorry if I was long winded 😬

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿👍

[docksider]

If you look at pre Tudor written Welsh they used V for the F sound. However when the bible was being printed in Welsh there was a shortage of Vs so it was agreed with the printer to use F for the V sound, and from then it caught on in the written language.

[MP-hziz]

The more formal/literary constructions are used in all but the most informal of written contexts, so learning them definitely isn't wasted :)

[docksider]

San Steffan, is Saint Stephen's, which was the name of the chapel in the old palace of Westminster where the House of Commons used to meet. Members sat in the choir stalls, which were banked and faced each other across a central isle - which is the layout of the Commons' chamber today. Welsh preserves the old metonymy that used to exist.

[Peepmin]

As someone who grew up speaking Welsh and learning through the Welsh medium in South Wales, this guy is teaching me things. Diolch!

[Gws_]

15:14 I love how you say "we have" 🐳

[GoldenKaos]

Also regarding month names - Medi/September is the month that corresponds to harvest, as "medi" is literally the Welsh word meaning to reap or to harvest.

Hydref is possibly from hydd + bref (stag + bleat/bellow/bray) so referring to the season stags would call out to mate.

Tachwedd is a word meaning "slaughter" - referring to the slaughter of livestock for winter. It's used primarily as the month these days of course.

Spot on with Gorffennaf and Rhagfyr, and Mehefin seems to mean "middle of Summer".

Then the rest are all latin as you say.

A note on Mawrth - a lot of European languages name that day of the week and the third month of the year after the god of war (even Tuesday is named after Tiw or Tyr) but I'm not sure if any of the others just use the same variation as Welsh does - in English it would be Mars Day and month of Mars.

[TheLooselois]

New fan here. I’m Welsh who doesn’t speak Welsh but lives in Hong Kong speaks Cantonese LOL. I’m also studying linguistics so you’re an entertaining and intriguing distraction from my studies. 😂


You make me want to learn Welsh again

[joshadams]

You mentioned the debate about traditional verb inflections. Modern Greek experienced a similar diglossia until recently. When Greece became independent in the early 19th century, the question of what variant of its language to teach in schools arose. Some Greeks advocated for Katharevousa, which preserved grammatical features of Ancient Greek. Others advocated for Demotiki, a descriptivist standardization of then-current usage, in which many ancient inflections were not used. Eventually, Demotiki won out, for the most part. As an aside, this comment likely contains spelling errors, as I am too lazy to verify the spellings of the variants.

[GoldenKaos]

I think the tendency and acceptance of switching to English for numbers (and it’s actually quite prevalent in *older* generations) is because official Welsh medium education only started being a thing in the mid-20th century (and coverage being far from complete even then) so you have a substantial amount of a certain age demographic who were taught their maths skills in English, and who are therefore more comfortable using English for any arithmetic they have to do later in life. It’s quite common to do your shopping completely in Welsh, chat with a cashier who is a Welsh speaker in perfect Welsh, and for them to then go: iawn, thirty-four pounds and fifteen pence os gwelwch yn dda

[ibRebecca]

Wow super impressed with your Welsh pronunciation!

[FrancescaHughes]

Translations - the public sector has a duty to provide bilingual materials and reply to messages in the chosen language. Private companies do not.

[frankhooper]

When I learned Spanish, ch, ll and rr were treated as separate letters, but apparently that change in 2010 when the Real Academia Española turned into mere digraphs. We were also taught in English (back in the 1950s) that the English vowels were A, E, I, O and U...and sometimes Y and W.

Now aged 73, it's time to start learning Welsh LOL.

[Kris_T_]

Yes Wenglish is a thing.. not only with numbers. I paid Dau Fifty for my chips just yesterday, I ordered in Welsh, but used the word Fish with a Welsh accent not Pysgod. I think we just go for whatever is shorter/easier.
We often switch to English for technical things. I work for a big multi national company, a lot of my colleagues are Welsh first language, company literature is bi-lingual, but meetings are all in English, at our level anyway, the parent company is German.
The problem with looking for translation work, is everyone does GCSE English and Welsh, so there's an over abundance of bi-lingual folk.

[alagon.oldrich]

I don't know if you've come across this yet in your studies, but there are a number of different dialects, some of which are not fully understandable to each other.
The northern and southern are somewhat understandable to each other though there are a lot of differences in grammar and word choice. But if you come to pembrokeshire, the younger generation are mostly taught to speak Dyfedeg, however the older generations speak what's known locally as north pembrokeshire or south pembrokeshire welsh, these two dialects are not very understandable to each other, both due to (sometimes large) differences in pronunciation and use of words which are often of old Norse (north pembrokeshire), or medieval english (south pembrokeshire) descent.
I often get to hear complaints from the older generation while in work, about how they cannot understand the welsh dialect spoken on various phone helplines, so they have to use the english options.

[BreninyGeifr]

9:01 Plenty of us still use the correct letter names: a, bi, èc, di, èdd, and so on. Using e sound as a name just sounds infantile

[Kymro-lff]

Medi : September : the harvest.
Hydref : octobre : the sound of the Deer (Hyddbref)
Tachwedd : november : fog (tawch) aspect (gwedd)

[yizhou]

I knew MacDonald's kiosks had Welsh. I thought it was because I was in Wales, so everything needed a Welsh version. One day, I went to London and realised that MacDonald's in London also had Welsh! Bendigedig!
I also switched my Windows to Welsh, but I ended up with 3 languages on the computer. Fine. Some settings must be wrong.