Welsh words to wonder at on stations and buildings in England and Wales and Photos Online - inspiring you to Learn Welsh on the Internet

 

 Flag of Wales. The red Welsh dragon.

Before Covid-19 I travelled every year to Wales to Writers' Holiday, in Fishguard. The train from Paddington passes through many stations. As you get near the border, even whilst still in England, you see a few Welsh signs. The train has bilingual signs.

I was reminded of that this year, 2021, the first year the Writers' holiday had to be cancelled.

I have plenty of time to practise my Welsh. I can learn on Duolingo. I could even attend a Welsh speaking Toastmasters group. Welsh is such a lovely sing-song language. Some words are similar to English or easy to learn. Others are memorable because they are so distinctive.

I looked at a photo of a Welsh hospital's Accident And Emergency entrance.

I saw three words. Two of the words were very long and hard to remember. But the middle word, presumably 'and' , was ac, starting with the same letter as and.

Just to be sure I had translated correctly, I went to translate google. ac was and. But was and ac?

It is well known to translators that you must translate back again to be sure. 

When I put in and, I found a and ac. Like a and an, I presumed, it is hard to say a in front of a word starting with a, so you add a consonant.

Welsh - English

a / ac - and

bach/fach - small

cawl - soup

coffi - coffee

dau - two

ond - but

sebon - soap

siop - shop

sosban - saucepan/pan

tri - three

y/yr - the

yn - in

yno - there

English Welsh

and - a/ac

but - ond

coffee - coffi

in - yn

one, two, three - un, dau, tri

saucepan/pan - sosban

shop - siop

small - bach/fach

soap - sebon

soup - cawl

the - y/yr

there - yno

three - tri (like triangle)

two - dau

Useful Websites

LEARN WELSH

duolingo.com

https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/cy/en/Learn-Welsh

TOASTMASTERS

https://www.toastmasters.org/Find-a-Club/01014712-voice-of-wales

TRANSLATE

https://translate.google.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Welsh_films

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is a teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters clubs and businesses.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Angela Lansbury B A Hons ACG ALB PM5 VC5
The Author - Quick Quotations

Blogs 

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers VP PR, IPP

Former Area Director S3. Club Coach for Nee Soon South Toastmasters Club

Member of TCA Toastmasters Club, Singapore Online Dynamic, Harrovians UK

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Language Learner's Badge for Welsh / Pin - Dysgu Cymraeg / Learning Welsh -

I travelled to Wales to the annual Writers' Holiday, which was held in summer, then in spring. The last one was in February 2019 just before the lockdown and unfortunately the scheduled even for 2021 had to be cancelled for 2021. 

I started translating road signs when I drove to Wales, then signs on stations when I took the train. ost signs were bilingual, which helped. Amongst the writers at the Writers' Holiday I usually found that in a group of four or five at the table at meal times somebody knew Welsh or at least a few words which they wanted to share. I also started learning Welsh on Duolingo.

My latest find came from hunting for badges which show which languages you speak. Even better is one which shows which language you want to learn.

Badge / Pin - Dysgu Cymraeg / Learning Welsh: 

"Our 'Learning Welsh' badges will encourage people to speak Welsh to you! Pin on with pride. 'Dysgu Cymraeg' means learning Welsh (language) Red with clear white font. Steel Pin back Good readble size - measures approx 38mm (1.5 inch) in diameter."

Their website has a handy page of Welsh. You can also pick up some Welsh from the articles for sale.

The sentence construction and phrase construction is noun-adjective, the opposite of English, but the same as French. To remember the French construction I say moulin rouge, which is red windmill. To remember the Welsh, I shall remember b a b i newydd which is new baby. Change the y to i, and watch that the spellchecker does not helpfully change it back to the English word.

English - Welsh

baby - babi

happy - hapus

happy Easter - Pasg Hapus

home - cartref

love - cariad

Mother - Mam

new - newydd

new home - cartref newydd

new baby - babi newydd

Wales - Cymru

you - ti

Welsh - English

babi - baby

babi newydd - new baby

cariad - love

cartref - home

caru ti - I love you

Cymru - Wales

diolch - thank you

hapus - happy

lechid da - good health

Mam - Mother

Newydd - new

Pasg - Easter

Pasg hapus - happy Easter

ti - you

Wyn in names such as Gwen, is from gwyn meaning white, fair or blessed. 

Want to know more?

They sell a Welsh learners' dictionary.

Wikipedia directed me to a website on Welsh names which told me that the name trevor is probably derived from the Welsh tref for village and mawr, which becomes or in more than one name listed, meaning large.

Useful Websites

https://welshgiftshop.com/collections/welsh-language-gifts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language

Welsh first name, surnames and place names:

https://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/welsh/2

Aboout the Author

Angela Lansbury travel writer and photographer, has visited Wales many times.

Angela Lansbury is teacher of English. (Advanced English and English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, French and other languages, an aspiring polyglot.)

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Member of many toastmasters  speaker training clubs, and speaking contest judge.

Angela Lansbury, the author of 20 books including Wedding Speeches & Toasts, and Quick Quotations, has lived in the USA, Spain and Singapore. 

She  has several blogs and writes daily on at least two of the following:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

 Please share links to your favourite posts.

Welsh Names, St Albans, Welsh For coffee and a toilet on trains to Writers' and Artists' Holidays in Wales - Live and Learn!

Window on Wales from Fishguard Bay Hotel. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Fishguard Bay Hotel, Wales. Photo by Angela Lansbury

Problem 1
I am going to Wales soon for Writers Holiday in Fishguard. I usually go in summer, but for 2018 the summer course has stopped but a long weekend course is available in February. I was emailed that new posts had been made in the forum of people who were learning Welsh on Duolingo. Another leaner asked?
How do you pronounce Welsh names?

Answer
If it's a living person, just ask them. If it's a character in a book, they are not around, consult a reference work.

I looked up a list of Welsh names, just out of curiosity. It reminded me of Welsh pronunciation of place names.

The big surprise was discovering the meaning of an English place name. Alban is Latin for mountain.  So St Albans - now I know a way to remember the name, and a Latin word.

Problem 2
I wrote on a forum on Duolingo:
Would somebody please tell me, for Welsh (and other langauges) a few phrases I can use on a train and at a railway station, such as 'where is ..' 'a cup of coffee' and 'the toilet'.

Another reader answered:

Ble mae'r . . . . . ffôn (Where is the . . . . . . phone) ....................tŷ bach (toilet) ................. allanfa (exit) ................. afon (river) .................. gwesty (hotel) .................. tacsi (taxi) .................. bws (bus) .................. trên (train) .................... tŷ bwyta (restaurant)

Faint ydy'r . . . . . tocyn (How much is the . . . . . ticket) ............. paned o goffi (cup of coffee) ............ bwyd (food) ............ brechdan (sandwich)

English - Welsh
bus - bws
coffee - goffi
exit - allanfa
food - bwyd
hotel - gwesty
How much is - Faint ydy'r ( my way of rmembering it is thinking : Have you a faint idea how much is ..?)
of - o
phone - ffôn 
river - afon
sandwich - brechdan
taxi - tacsi
toilet - tŷ bach 
where is - Ble mae'r

Welsh - English
allanfa - exit
afon - river (like the River Avon which is the same thing said twice in two languages)
Ble mae'r - where is
brechdan - sandwich
bws - bus
bwyd - food
Faint ydy'r - how much is
ffôn - phone
gwesty - hotel (think of a hotel guest)
o - of
tacsi - taxi
tŷ bach - toilet

Useful Website for Welsh Words
Welsh names
http://www.namenerds.com/welsh/trad2.html

Learn Welsh on
http://duolingo.com

Welsh Holiday Information:
http://visitwales.com

Writers' Holiday in Wales:
http://www.writersholiday.net

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have other posts on learning Welsh and other languages such as Italian, French, German, Russian, Hebrew. Please share links to your favourite posts.

How to recognize and remember Welsh words for: eat, cauliflower, parsnips, trifle

Problem
How do you reocognize and remember the spelling and pronunciation of Welsh words?

Answers
(Spaces inserted to thwart the automatic spell checker and to help you to see the differences between Welsh and English.

Welsh - English
b a r a - bread
c o f f i - coffee
bwyta - eat (the last two letters are the same reversed bwyTA - eAT; I remember BolT your food=eaT)
oren - orange
pannas - parsnips (first two letters and last letters are the same, so is the N in the middle PAnNas - PArsNipS
reis - rice
te - eat
treiffl - trifle

English - Welsh
bread - b a r a
coffee - c o f f i
eat - bwyta
orange - oren
parsnips - pannas
rice - reis
te - tea
trifle - treiffl

Tips
1 Photograph menus
Photograph a menu at a coffee bar on a Welsh station or in a Welsh high street. Look at it on the train home. Look at the website of a Welsh restaurant or café. (Americans say Main street. In England people say high street.)
2 duolingo.com
(Free on line learning website for many languages from English and from several languages to learn English)
3 Translate using Google
google translate
4 Translate using second source
http://mymemory.translated.net/en/Welsh/English/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. You will find several more posts on learning Welsh and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

How to recognize and remember Welsh words for orange, lemonade, rice, home and more

Problem
Look at a map of Wales or take a train towards Wales or through Wales and you will see Welsh words on the train, the stations, the shops, and hear people speaking Welsh.
How do you recognize and remember Welsh words? They look different.

Answer
Look closely and you will see similarities. Or make up sentences to link Welsh and English words. English has such a large vocabulary, borrowed from languages all over the world, that you should be able to remember some links.

Welsh - English
adre - home or homewards (I think of he wants to go to his home address)
gwin - wine looks like g - win (memory aid sentence: Go and get me wine - the letter w in Welsh sounds a bit like oo) Say the English memory aid in a mock Welsh accent.
lemonêd - lemonade (you make the hat or circumflex on the e by holding the E key and tapping 3 key)
mae'r - there is
oren - orange (looks like a short form of orange)
reis - rice
wit ti eisiau - would you like / do you want (sounds like would you, eh? see - I! See it and love it. Ti for you is like French tu and old English thee as in the song 'I vow to thee my country'. Have you got your eye on it? I listen to it again and the s is more of a Sh sound, so I remember: Don't be shy.)
ydy - does (he)

English - Welsh
does (he) - ydy (pronounced iddy)
do you want / would you like - wit ti eisiau
home - adre
lemonade - lemonêd (think of sitting in a sunhat drinking lemonade; the first part of the word is the same, the hat is on the second e to turn it intothe sound' ay')
orange - oren (drop the letter a but keep the letter e)
rice - reis (Interestingly, the Welsh is written with an s, the English with c for s like Russian); think of the redundant e like the silent e used twice in the name George which changes the hard G sound into a J sound)
wine - gwin

Tips
duolingo.com (free on line learning website for many languages from English and from several languages to learn English)
google translate
http://mymemory.translated.net/en/Welsh/English/mae%27r

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. You will find several more posts on learning Welsh and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Learn Welsh words: from castle park to red roses

Welsh - English
hostel - hostel
parc - park
Castell - castle
y n y s - island
cerrig - stone
picnic - picnic
b a e - bay
pen - head
llan - church
rhos - roses
goch - red
sain - saint/St
ffordd - ford

Adjectives
Adjectives go after the noun in Welsh. So the Welsh for red roses is rhos goch.

www.visitwales.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. I have several more posts on speaking Welsh and other languages and visiting Wales and other countries. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Learn Welsh words for cow, duck and rabbits

Problem
How do you remember Welsh animals?

Answer
Look for letter combinations.

Welsh - English
buwch - cow (think of b for bull, u for moo, w third letter of cow, c first letter of cow)
crwban - tortoise (think of it being cruel to ban a tortoise CRwBAN)
cwningen - rabbits (CheWING carrots and breeding like rabbits aGaiN)
hwyaden - duck (how why a D uck)

English - Welsh
cow - buwch
duck - hwyaden
rabbits - cwningen
tortoise - crwban

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker, and teacher of English and other languages.

Why Learn Languages? People Make Such Awful Mistakes!

Problem
It's time consuming. I can't get the accents right, or roll my rs.

Answer
Learn through duolingo.com. Just do five minutes a day. By the end of the year you should have a vocabulary of about 100-200 words, enough to get started and feel confident and ahead of all those people who don't know one word.


Story
A friend says it's hard to master Welsh.

I am not planning to master Welsh, not this year, not yet. I admire my friend's aspiration to do so. All I want to do in year one of learning Welsh is read the signs on stations and shops and say please and thank you and good morning if I hear somebody in a cafe speak in Welsh. 

I want to understand what the Welsh male voice choir is singing. I generally smile, but wonder if smiling is appropriate. Are they are singing, 'I love the world,' or, 'my true love has died'? 

Also I want to understand what the restaurant is saying about me. I always hope it's: 'Give that dear little lady an extra large portion of chips.'

Tips

Listen to the sound of words of country names in Wikipedia.


Author
Angela Lansbury, teacher of English and other languages.

Quick Ways To Learn Welsh for: new, school, hat and more

Problem
I am already learning Welsh on Duolingo. How can I go faster?

Answer
List the words - with a memory aid. Then practise.
Go back and redo the lessons every couple of days to reinforce them.

Here are today's words:

English - Welsh
(Spaces inserted because automatic speller keeps changing my words.)
belt - g w r e g y s (memory aid - Good Wide Regulation Yellow Strap - visualise a Japanese obi or a martial arts belt)
blouse - blows
clothes - d i l l a d (I think of don't DILL y DA l l y, put clothes in cupboArD. d i l l a d.)
coat - cot
half slip - p a i s (letter h A l  f  S l I P - PA IS)
hat - het
new - n e w y d d
scarf - s g a r f f
school - y s g o l
suit - s i w t
tie - t e i
trousers - t r o w s u s

Welsh - English
blows - blouse
c o t - coat
d i l l a d - clothes
g  w r e g y s - belt
h e t - hat
n e w y d d - new
p a i s - half slip
s g a r f f - scarf
s i w t - suit
t e i - tie
t r o w s u s - trousers
y s g o l - school

Tips
Free learning on the internet:
www.duolingo.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several posts on learning Welsh and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.