How to Learn to recognize and remember Welsh words: hen, wolf, shark, owl, goat

Problem
How do you remember Welsh words?

Answer
List them twice in a notebook, Welsh English and English Welsh. Test yourself by covering half the page.

Welsh - English
blaidd - wolf (If I had a blade I'd rescue Red Riding Hood from the wolf.)
gafr - goat (GAfr - GoAt. The f and the t are both letters with uprights.)
Lar - hen (LAr - LAy eggs, hen, layer)
siark - shark (Sounds like shark. Same sound as the name Sian pronounced like Shawn.)

English - Welsh
goat - gafr -(like gaffer meaning old guy or boss)
hen - lar (looks like layer)
shark -siark
wolf - blaidd (Remember y turns to i often in the middle of a word. Double d at the end, like a double blade.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Translating European and Romanian Names - Red, Maria, Michael and more

Problem
How do you recognize a personal name in Romanian?

Answer
The good news is that, unlike German, proper names have capitals and ordinary nouns start with small letters.

Reading and Saying Names
First the good news. Most Romanian names look similar and sound similar to English names.

Now the bad news. There are slight variations which may confuse you.

Story
I was learning Romanian on Duolingo. I saw J O A N A . Easy, peasy, I thought. That must be Joanna. Wrong. It translates as Jane.

If you go into name websites, or have studied names, you will appreciate that the basic biblical names and names from olden times and the Hebrew and Greek and Roman languages have numerous variations all derived from one word.

The language is phonetic - same as it sounds, so redundant letters are dropped. That means losing double letters (except when showing plurals?)

SAME SAME!
Women's Names The Same In Romanian and English
Alexandra - Alexandra
Daniela - Daniela
Maria - Maria
Sofia - Sofia

Men's Names The Same In Romanian and English
David - David
Gabriel - Gabriel

Romanian - English
ROMANIAN MEN
A n d r e i - Andrew
C r i s t i a n - Christian
L u c a - Luke
M a r c u - Mark
M a t e i - Matthew
Michael - Mihai

ROMANIAN WOMEN
A n a - Anna
A n g e l i c a - Angela (Same in Romanian and Italian. Not surprising, as Romanian means from Romans, who were Italian.)
C r i s t i n a - Christina
I o a n a - Jane
Maria / Mary - Maria

English - Romanian
ENGLISH MEN'S FIRST NAMES
Basil - V a s i l e (More in the older generation.)
John / Jon - Ion
Luke - L u c a
Mark / Marc - M a r c u
Matthew - M a t e i
Michael - Mihai
Peter - P e t r u / P e t r e (Spell in Romanian like the French / European spelling of metre for meter and theatre for American theater.)
Stephen / Steven - S t e f a n

ENGLISH WOMEN'S FIRST NAMES
Angela - A n g e l i c a (Same in Romanian and Italian. Not surprising, as Romanian means from Romans, who were Italian.)
Christina - C r i s t i n a
Elizabeth - E l i s a b e t a / I s a b e l l a
Jane - I o a n a (Not Joanna but Jane)
Sarah - I can't find any translation into Romanian. However both Italian and German use the simplified version S a r a.
Susan - S u s a n a

Easy to remember ROMANIAN SURNAMES:
Albu - White
L u p u - Wolf
N e g r u - Black
M o l d o v e a n u - from Moldova
P e t r e s c u - Peter's child
R o ș u - Red
Ursa - bear

One popular Romanian surname is P o p a meaning priest. (Like the Jewish origin name Cohen means priest.)
P o p e s c u means priest's son or daughter.

Tips on Translation and Names
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_name
To translate names into any language go to
http://www.namepedia.org/en/firstname/translate/
While researching the name priest and Cohen I found a website which analyses the endings (suffixes) of many European names used in the USA:
http://www.jewfaq.org/jnames.htm

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, language teacher. Please read my previous and future posts and when you find a favourite, share it with family, friends and colleagues.

Easy To Remember German Language Words

Problem
How do I remember German words?

Answer
Look for similarities in spelling.

Story
I am learning German free from the internet using Duolingo both on a laptop and on a mobile phone. However, typing up the new words and how to remember them, on my blog, helps to reinforce the memory. Recognising the German is easier than translating back from English to German. I have to look at the word and talk to myself as if I were teaching somebody else. You might try doing the same, silently if you are on the train or in a public place, out loud if you are at home or in an empty office.

Tips
German - English
Affe - monkey (an affable ape monkeying around)
Elefant - elephant
Der Hamster - the hamster
Kamel - camel
Die Schildkröte - turtle (not just a small tortoise but a huge shield-cracking turtle; note the capital letter , the k instead of c, and the double dot on the o, like the eyes of the turtle)
Eine Giraffe - a giraffe
Tiger - tiger
Ein Wal - a whale
Wolf - wolf
Zebra - zebra

English - German
camel - Kamel
elephant - Elefant (the German spelling is almost the same, but the complicated ph is simplified to f, and the German word starts with a capital letter because it is a noun)
A giraffe - eine Giraffe (same word except that the Germans use capital letters for the initial letter of a noun)
monkey - A f f e
The hamster - der hamster
tiger - Tiger
The turtle - Die Schildkröte (note the extra c in the German Sh and the capital letter)
wolf - Wolf (the wolf - der Wolf)
A whale - Ein Wal (same word simplified, without the h which we don't pronounce and the e which we don't pronounce)
zebra - Zebra

Author
Angela Lansbury, author and teacher of English, languages, public speaking.See my other posts on languages and travel. Please like, follow and share.