What do the Welsh words mean? You see them when you drive into Wales. You find them in Welsh names if you are compiling a directory of places in Great Britain.
Answers
You can quickly find a translation through Google translate or whatever comes up first on the internet. You can also her the pronunciation
Stories
What did we do before the days of the internet? When I was researching the first edition of See Britain at Work for Exley Publications, I found mysterious Welsh names. Several of them were a mystery until I found one company which had the address in both Welsh and English. I was then able to translate the other names of potteries, cafés and houses. I recall Y Sospan Fach. The little saucepan.
My interest in Welsh was revived when I took a holiday to Writer's Holiday in Wales. They run courses in spring, summer and winter.
Another reminder of Welsh was from a writer on Grapedeal.com who sent me this information:
Y Ddraig Wen (The White Dragon)
Y Ddraig Goch (The Red Dragon)
Wine is gwin (‘gween’)
Vine is winwydden (‘winwerthen’) ( I think or vine growing from the earth in the garden of Eden.)
Vineyard is winllan (‘winchlan’) The Welsh ch is pronounced as in the Scottish word loch as if you are trying to clear your throat. (Think of the place name Llandudno.)
Tips
Here's a translation of the lyrics of the song about the little saucepan. the first word I noticed was the name D a f y d d which is David in English. What does that suggest about an easy way to remember pronunciation?
Welsh - English
ddraig - dragon
f a c h - small
g o g h red (spelling like Van Gogh - think of the artist with the red face in a red van)
g w i n - wine
s o s p a n / s o s b a n - saucepan (I had to insert spaces because spell checker thinks a more common word is soybean! You might like to remember the soy beans in the saucepan, or that the letter p is an upside down b and b is an upside down p.) The sounds in English and Welsh are almost the same.
w e n - white
w i n l l a n - vineyard
y - the
English - Welsh
dragon - d d r a i g
little - f a c h
red - G o c h
saucepan - s o s p a n (Again I have had to insert spaces. Spell checker wanted to change the word into two words, so and span.)
small - f a c h
white - wen (I think: When will my clothes be white?)
vine - w i n w y d d e n
vineyard - w i n l l a n (I think of wine land or as the Americans might say, a wine yard. Americans call their garden a yard, which is ironic, because both gardens and houses in the USA are much bigger than in the UK nowadays.)
wine - g w i n (I had to insert spaces. Automatic spell checker inserted gain. My memory aid is: Go and get WINe.)
the - y (Looks like ee to rhyme with the but it's pronounced er.)
See my other posts on Welsh, and other languages such as German, Italian, Spanish, Romanian and Russian. See my travel posts on London and England, the USA, the city state of Singapore, and Italy, especially Umbria.
Author
Angela Lansbury, Travel writer and photographer, teacher of English, languages, and public speaking.
Please see my other posts on the blog and other blogs in blogger.com, or like my posts, follow me and share profiles and posts from here and on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. My books are on Amazon and Lulu.com You can read excerpts and buy on line or buy a copy from me if we meet in which case I will sign it for you and if you like make up a personalised rhyming couplet for you or the person for whom you are buying the book.
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