Helo, ti'n iawn?
Cari dw i. Dw i'n byw yn Efrog a astudio ym Mangor - I'r gyfraith = Cachu!!!!!!!

Being the ONLY person in my family that doesn't speak Welsh fluently as their first language you can imagine family get togethers were at best, irrtating, so I took Welsh as part of my university course. Now it's the holidays I'm having no lectures. Can anyone reccommend a good book to learn with? I don't want to have to pester my parents to teach me stuff - They're busy enough as it is! 

Hello,

I will be traveling to Wales this summer and figured I'd take a bit of time to know any Welsh at all. Do you have any suggestions for the basic standard skill-set for speaking Welsh? Having studied other languages, I'd like to learn the object pronouns and basic conjugations first. Other self-teaching systems (BBC Wales' Big Welsh Challenge jumped out) seem to focus on seeing conversations, and deriving the object pronouns from the video...

From what I've gathered, I believe the pronouns for northern Welsh are:

	Single	Plural
First Person	i	ni
Second Person	ti	chi
Third Person	o/hi	hwy

Any help would be appreciated.

xposted to linguaphiles

Does anyone have this newest addition? I want to know if it comes with audio recordings, but I can't find pertinent information for this copy on the Amazon page. $43 would seem a lot for just the text, but I'm not going to buy it if CDs are not included.

Nhw oedd brenhinoedd y byd ar un tro,
Diplodocws, Tyranosor,
Ac angau'u crafangau miniog a main
Yn rheoli'r ddaear. Ni wyddai'r rhain
Y deuai eu byd i ben cyn bo hir
Pan giliai golau yr heulwen o'r tir.

My try:

They once were the kings of the world
Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus
And the death by their sharp and delicate claws
ruled the world. We knew these
came top of the world long ago
when the sunlight of the land went away.

How wrong am I?

Where can I find online resources for Welsh language idioms and slang? Modern or historical are booth ok. Google gives me sites with not a lot of info and a lot of broken links.

Thanks!!!

Greetings all!

I am hoping that someone here can either confirm or set me straight on the meaning of the name Daere. I believe it's a Welsh girl's name meaning friend.

How would it be pronouced? And on a side note, is it a popular or unusual name?

Earlier today, I received a telephone call from a new friend. I have sent her two files in which I have attempted to pronounce Welsh as clearly and simply as I can.

If you're interested, drop me an email requesting the sound files, which will be available as WMA files. My email address is the same as my LJ account name at yahoo dot co dot uk.

@Kali, dwi'm gobeithio bod byddech chi'nmwynhau'r ffeiliau. (@Kali, I hope you enjoy the files.)

I decided to have a go at translating the shortest short story in the world (or one of them). Tri dau-word sentences (I'm practicing numbers as well).

Ar werth. Babanod sgidiau. Byth gwisgo.

I couldn't find the ownership form of "baban", or the past tense of "gwisgo".:( I don't know what else I've got wrong there. Any hints?  Pronunciation guides also very welcome.

( English Under Cut )

I'm a cyclist, and most drivers are prats (no offence to anyone present; I'm sure those of you who drive are very good at it, and never try to overtake a vulnerable road-user with less than two inches of space free).

The one thing most people want to know first when learning a new language is how to swear in it. So combining those two things...can anyone recommend any choice phrases for me to scream at drivers (or, just mutter under my breath)? I'm thinking specific phrases like "if there's not enough room to overtake me safely, don't try to overtake!" or, more general things like "What the fuck?!"

Things that I can mutter about my managers under my breath would be nice too. It's okay, I have a quiet voice. Most people can't hear me when I'm trying to let them.:(

Since I'm very new to learning Welsh, and have limited irl access to those who can speak or read it, can any suggestions please include a simple proununciation guide and a word-for-word translation, so I can maybe start to figure out words and construct sentences of my own?

Incidentally, I created my first sentence, yesterday. "Kali dw i, ast". I think my manners need work, but I'm still quite proud.

Speaking of manners, any suggestions or "please", "thank you", "yes" or "no" will be welcomed as well.

:D

Dwi wedi newydd cyrraedd yma ar ol cael y cyfeiriad oddi wrth y cymuned livejournal_uk. Helo. Dwi'n newydd yma. Dwi'n ailddysgu Cymraeg. Hoffwn i i gyfarfod gyda bobol yma i ymarfer siarad a dysgu Cynraeg mewn cwmni da.

(I just got here after finding out the address from the livejournal_uk community. Hi. I'm new here. I'm relearning Welsh. I'd like to meet with people here to practice my Welsh in good company.)

Diolch i chi am eich amser. (Thanks for your time.)

I was wondering if anyone had come across SaySomethingInWelsh? As far as I can tell (I haven't tried any of the lessons yet) it centers around listening & repeating what you hear, building up phrases that way. There's no writing anything down or reading anything. I assume it's easier to pick up the pronounciation when the learner is just listening to it rather than trying to figure it out from the written form... I know it's the vowels I have difficulty with.

Anyway I was just curious to see if anyone had given it a go & what their thoughts on it were.

Helo. Kali dw i.

...and that's about the extent of my Welsh.

I'm taking a course on beginner's Welsh next year, and I've started early. I'm 1/16 Welsh (my mother's mother's mother's father), and my boyfriend is half Welsh. He's been having a bad time recently, which is what gave me the final spur to learn the language (his mother spoke it as a child, but had it beaten out of her at school:().

I've been playing around on the BBC's site (I see you've got the link over there to the right), and in the last day or so I've learned how to introduce myself (above), how to call people names ('ast' and 'y lembo gwirion'), the names of drinks (mostly fodka efo leim or lemoned - does anyone know how to do that funny accent over the 'e' in lemoned?) and how to count to eight (un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chesch (I think), saith, wyth). Oh, and I've known sosban fach since I read Howl's Moving Castle, although I still can't sing the entire thing without the words in front of me.

Anyway, I wanted a place to practice cymraeg (is that the proper usage?) amongst people who are familiar with it. So, hi.

I've got a tiny purse, a free internetconnection in my cellphone, and can't read Welsh literature without a dictionary, so what I'd really need right now is a Welsh online dictionary that works well on cellphoneinternet. Any suggestions?

Can someone correct my translation, please?

Dyma ddiwedd ar ddyddiau'r brenhinoedd fu gynt,
A'u hurddas a'u grym wedi mynd gyda'r gwynt.
Yn bentwr o esgyrn hyd llidw y llawr
Gorweddai yn gelain pob deinosor mawr
Heb neb i alaru na chanu ei clod;
Wel, doedd bechgyn a merched ddim eto yn bod!


Here is the end of the kings of old,
But their dignity and power went with the wind.
A stack of bones until ash of the floor
Lay a corpse of every big dinosaur
Without anybody growing tired of singing their commendation;
Well... there weren't boys and girls yet!


Is a'u short for "a eu"?
I didn't quite understand hyd llidw y llawr. I just guessed something.
I couldn't quite understand alaru.

I'm trying to read/translate this children's book called tŷ Jac.

It's really difficult because it's a poem. Can anybody tell me if my translation is correct?

Du oedd ein byd ni, duach na glo,
Ymhell bell bell cyn co',
Duach na'r fagddu, duach na du,
Duach na düwch glo.

My attempt:

Our world was black, blacker than coal,
Far far far before memory,
Blacker than the gross darkness, blacker than black,
Blacker than the blackest coal.

I knew this was going to hit me in the head sooner or later: one of my roadblocks in trying to pronounce Welsh by listening to audio examples (I do not have access to a face-to-face Welsh-speaking community and understand that my pronunciation is going to be poor, it's just a matter of degree) is the rolled r. The r (not rh) sounds like an alveolar trill? Sadly, it's not something I've had to learn before and my ability to produce anything resembling it is sadly hit or miss. Is there some strategy for this beyond "try really hard over and over again" or exercises I might try to work up to a decent trill? Thank you!

x-posted to linguaphiles

Hello--So I have been poring over a couple Welsh self-study books and listening to a podcast, and it occurs to me that while the pronunciation of individual consonants and vowels is all right, I'm a little baffled as to where stress falls. There's general agreement that it usually goes on the penultimate syllable, but I could swear there have been a couple words on the podcast where it sounds like it's going on the syllable before that. Are there many exceptions and is there a pattern to them? My username, for instance--is the emphasis on ni or si in Efnisien? I am having no luck with Google; any help appreciated.

x-posted to linguaphiles

hello there!
I've just(couple of minutes ago;) started to learn Welsh and I have one problem: pronunciation. So I'm looking for a site like howjsay.com where you can listen to the correct pronunciation of the welsh words. Does anyone know one?
I use the tables like this but It would be better to have an example, wouldn't it?
Thanks in advance!

I'm writing a paper on Welsh grammar (in contrast to German grammar) and would like some help from the native speakers as my course book isn't too precise there.

In your opinion, which one are you more likely to use in spoken Welsh: the long tense with 'bod' or the short tenses where you add a suffix to the stem?

Also, is there any difference in meaning you get when using the short form instead of the long in the past or future? Say if you use 'Dysga'i' instead of 'Fe fydda i'n dysgu'?

Help would be greatly appreciated!

Diolch yn fawr!