What I Wish I Knew Beginning Welsh - tips!

Welsh, like any other language, is filled with cultural references and social aspects which you will not expect if you are coming from another country, be it England or any other country in the world.

Here are 7 tips - or things I wish I knew - when I set out on this journey, now fluent in Cymraeg (Welsh). These may help you - I hope - to avoid pitfalls and icebergs culturally, but also linguistically as well. Wales may be a small country, but its depth and layers of culture equal nations many times its size and there are things you need to be aware of when getting into Welsh and Wales.


00:00 Beginning
00:20 Chapter 1 North and South
05:22 Chapter 2 English Attitudes
08:30 Chapter 3 Welsh Attitudes
10:30 Chapter 4 Wenglish
17:01 Chapter 5 Yes and No
18:04 Chapter 6 Latin in Welsh
20:02 Chapter 7 Masculine and Feminine

-----
Gear I use:

[CarlsLingoKingdom]

Cymraeg: We have 25 ways to say "yes" and "no!" How do you do it, Scotland?
Gàidhlig: Uh...we have 0 ways. We just say "is" and "is not." 🤣

[dafyddrees]

9:10 - Growing up Welsh speaking in some parts of Wales is like growing up being a foreigner in your own country. Welsh is often (at least in a lot of the South) something that you speak with family and with childhood friends. It's sad that native speakers would do this but we often treat Welsh the way Indian imigrant families in London might speak an Indian language at home and English outside the front door. Several times I've overheard old ladies having a quiet, personal coversation in a post office or a shop about how terrible some woman's dress is or how they wouldn't wear something like that. It's too easy to fool ourselves into thinking it's a secret code. In one book I remember the author describing not being friendly with somebody as having "not had much Welsh between us": "Roedd 'na fawr o Gymraeg rhyngddo ni." In my experience of growing up Welsh was pretty much contrained to little pockets of Welshness: Welsh language school, the chapel, and the eisteddfod. It was strange visiting Aberystwyth University as an adult and experiencing an environment where it feels normal (not forced or artificial) for Welsh to be the normal first language. It's good that train announcements are now in Welsh - because it's normalsing the use of it especially for something everyday and practical.

[garthhunt]

There is BBC Newyddion and other Welsh language programs that a standard Welsh.

[Fbdagm]

First, the north south thing was SPOT ON. I moved to Machynlleth in north Powys a year ago. You hear north south and wenglish all over the place. The only way to survive is to realise that is all just welsh, and it’s not much worse than north v south English and the same as Scottish English v English English. Too many learners books play up the difference, which exists, but is not as bad as you think when you start out.

[taunonhumppakarajat]

Regarding your suggestion for Standard Welsh, this is what was done for Finnish in the 19th century to keep the dialects from drifting further apart and to have a single standard of the language. The result, Standard Finnish (kirjakieli, 'book language'), is a purposefully created mishmash of different dialects, and the result was equally alien and equally familiar to all.

While Standard Finnish did succeed in halting the divergence of the dialects, it did not replace them but became a formal register. You can hear and read Standard Finnish in the news and in many official circumstances, but in casual everyday interaction, the people use the spoken variety of Finnish, which differs from Standard Finnish quite a lot.

As a result, language learning materials (at least the sensible ones) teach learners of Finnish both the formal Standard Finnish and the casual Spoken Finnish.

Perhaps having a Standard Welsh would prevent people from switching into English in official situations, like you described?

[CuDoesThings]

As a native Yiddish speaker I completely understand your frustration with not having a standard language 💀

(for context we used to, but that made almost everyone angry and so now the old standard language is just another dialect, and we've ended up with 3 different spellings of the language's own name)

[davegraham]

Similar things could be said for many/all languages. With more experience one can go towards an "explain the whole of language via .... language in three minutes", with or without the use of visual materials and actions. A compression that gets more and more perfected. Each language has a set of problems that need to be solved.

[tedi]

I absolutely hate the way some Welsh speakers will not just put English words, but often complete sentences into conversations! You have to remember though, in the past, Welsh did not have equal status with English and could not be used in official situations and I think that this will explain why many people replace many of the long official words and words not used in everyday speach with English words.

[michaelhalsall]

Sadly all the Celtic languages are belitted in the own lands. In France the Breton language receives little or no help from the French government. In Northern Ireland there is still a debate about the teaching Gaelige in schools and Scotland there were complaints about bilingual road signs. Regarding the English language in some parts of Europe it's considered cool to be able to speak (American) English, so I wonder if this has had an effect on younger Welsh speakers.

[dafyddrees]

4:01 In the south we use “cleren” for a housefly but also “pryfyn” generally for any little insect.

[MP-hziz]

Found your video on gender in Welsh really useful before, so good to have another quick primer! I personally love the different accents and dialects, and I think I was far too concerned about this when I started because most of the differences as you say are not huge, unless you're always having conversations about gates, insects or farm equipment. I've found that listening to enough Welsh language TV/radio has quickly got me used to hearing many of the most common dialectical differences.

[SaintHound]

Your description of masculine and feminine nouns as generally concrete or abstract is definitely a quality-of-life-level learning for me. Thank you!

[serviustullus]

At, dog, glass, pool, well, etc are Welsh words in English - and there are many others.

[ZadenZane]

For TV and the media i think you do definitely need a standard form of a language that is not dialect otherwise it can look as if you're favouring one part of the country over the others.
If you can be neutral and speak a language without local dialect then people will focus on the message not the messenger. What i found confusing about the Welsh lessons at school was that the literary Welsh and dialect Welsh were never explained to us. We were never taught grammar in any depth, i found out that for myself from books and learned the dialect from friends. When you get to 16 in the British education system you have to drop every academic subject except for the 3 you take forward to A Level meaning i dropped Welsh. I did French, German and English at A Level but no Welsh and I so regret that now. I always thought my Welsh wasn't very good because after 3 years I still couldn't understand most of what people said around me. Looking back i was actually close to the edge of becoming fluent, so much so that 30 years later I can still understand TV and news broadcasts so well i was shocked when i tuned in the other day. I'm nowhere close to knowing every word but I do follow the gist. So I'm learning again. In London! If I do return to wales I'm determined to come back as a fluent Welsh speaker!

[Fbdagm]

Fourth; wenglish. You’re spot on here. No big Welsh words in wenglish. No cydweithedriad (co-operation), nor damcanisethau (theoris). Also, the way they drop in and out of Welsh / English is amazing, midway through a sentence English words drop in and out at random. It’s amzsing to hear.

[PippyPets]

Great insights! I’ve noticed that myself about Wenglish - makes things challenge as a Welsh language learner.

[serviustullus]

I agree with what you say. Welsh simply needs a standard Welsh to validity its identity/longevity. North and South is based on medieval politics.

[garmit]

I am born and bread in the south of England to a welsh father and English mother. I still have family in wales and none speak Cymraeg. I’ve been learning yr hen iaith for a number of years and i’m jealous that my welsh cousins, aunts and uncles have so much of their language around them and myriad opportunities to speak it. I’m also frustrated that they are so patriotic but don’t feel that the language has any part in that. In fact, an uncle is derogatory of welsh speakers as well as the language, constantly moaning about the amount of money invested in promoting its use. My view is that there is a significant part of the older generation who grew up in wales after Cymraeg had been banned in schools and stigmatised by the English government which feels the promotion of welsh will somehow take some of the legitimacy of their welshness away. I think they afraid of becoming regarded as somehow less welsh by not understanding and using welsh. It’s an odd behaviour to me because even the place names give them Knowledge of Cymraeg. Place names like ‘Dinas Powys’, ‘Aber’anything, ‘Pont’anything give clues. And now that English place names have the welsh equivalent on public signs they must see names like Abertawe, Caerdydd, Cas-Newydd regularly. I thing many know mire welsh than the realise. O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau! Diolch am eich vlog, roedd hi’n wahanol a ddiddorel iawn. Dw i’n mwynhau eich channel chi.

[jameshumphreys]

How you put masculine and feminine is a great way to learn and remember.
The YouTuber Rob from Rob Word had a trick how to know what the English word just by using the French word, and same can be done in Welsh, if you know mutations, and what letters responds to what sounds like
Lefel
Deg
Dwy if you know old English.

[michaelhalsall]

Even wthin the English speaking world people can be ridiculed for speaking with regional accents and using local slang words. Have you noticed how Hollywood uses Southern US accents to identify people as bad guys or simpletons? People from the north of England are often ridiculed by Londoners because of the provincial accents too.