Margaret are you aware of Libro for borrowing ebooks?
Do they have any Welsh audio books?
I don’t think so. But i could well be wrong. Worth a look though.
There is this one, Bore Da on Audible
Edit: Actually, there are quite a few on Audible, which has probably already been mentioned on here . I’ll get me coat.
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Many thanks, will track them down.
I think that it’s revealing that audiobooks in welsh appear to be harder to find. Is it because, as with @margaretnock and experience of libraries, the assumption is that if you speak Welsh you speak English so you’ll be quite happy with an English audiobook.
350,000 ish speakers of Icelandic and, as far as a quick search seems to indicate, plenty of audiobooks in Icelandic, so in Welsh this is a real shortcoming or a great little business opportunity?
I haven’t yet checked on Gwales, Y Lolfa and so on so maybe somthing on there.
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Did you fill in the consultation on the Welsh Language by the Senedd, because this should go here, perhaps via a letter to your AM?
link to siw thread on it
Libro seems to only connect up with libraries which are connected to it, which Carmarthenshire isn’t. It also has almost no support on google play, from where I would be downloading the app.
Carmarthenshire libraries got back to me, bilingually, Welsh first,
"Bolinda Borrowbox and ebooks Wales National Service are both working with the Welsh Books Council to facilitate Welsh e- audio content.
A number of Welsh audio spoken word cds are available to borrow from Carmarthenshire Libraries."
So, I look forward to hearing the results.
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Do you mean quite a few Welsh audio books? If so, that’s really good news.
I was aware of one there, which I think was actually specifically written with putting an audiobook of it on audible. There was some publicity for it at the time. Not sure if it was “Bore Da”, but it may well have been. If there are more, that’s all to the good.
(However, in the grand scheme of things, I fear that there simply are not (so far) a great deal of audiobooks in Welsh at all, anywhere. Petitioning libraries, etc will only be ultimately fruitful if the books are there in the first place. My guess is that publishers just don’t see it as financially worth while. It’s a bit like the situation with DVD versions of programmes on S4C - very few and far between (“Y Gwyll” being one of the notable exceptions).).
(I do really _wan_t to be optimistic - honest! 
)
And similar with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, none of which is a “giant” language.
(One of the big markets is crime/thrillers/“noir”, which admittedly, is not everyone’s cup of tea).
(And even though the languages are strongly related, at least for the popular books they do usually go to the trouble of translating them into the “other” Scandi languages and in many cases recording audiobooks from them. Presumably the number of Scandi speakers, while small, is still a big enough critical mass for this to be successful commercially. So, the number of Welsh speakers just needs to grow a bit, and this might happen with Welsh as well).
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Or the existing Welsh speakers just need to shift their consumption preferences from English to Welsh.
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How did you find them? I remember I once found Bore Da, but I haven’t seen any others. I’d love to find audiobooks for children in Welsh, but the library in Barry was completely unhelpful about that.
So I guess that means that Borrowbox doesn’t have any Welsh content at the moment? Last time I looked at it, my phone at the time didn’t have space for the app, so I gave up.
To be fair, there is a pretty decent selection of audiobooks for adults on CD at our local library.
That’s good to know. Not being a Welsh resident, I can’t easily just browse what’s on the shelves physically. (I think I have occasionally tried to browse Welsh libraries online, but didn’t get very far. Can’t remember why now, exactly).
If you could possibly, some time while you are in your local library, note down a few authors, and maybe titles, of what’s available in Welsh on CD, that would be very interesting, just to get a “feel”.
But of course the audiobook market in general has moved away from CDs, and on to downloadable books (e.g. audible), so that’s where we will hopefully see new audiobooks becoming available.
…
A google search for audiobooks in Welsh (I keep trying it!) brought up this old thread:
https://forum.saysomethingin.com/t/learning-welsh-as-an-independent-study-north-or-south-dialect
Among many relevant postings, someone said he made use of the audiobooks (in Welsh ) in Swansea library recorded by the RNIB for the blind. That’s a great service for the blind, but it’s a pity that audiobooks have in the past (in the UK) been seen as just a niche market like that.
(It seems to be different in other parts of Europe).
The ones he was talking about were on CD, and he didn’t think they could be loaned outside of that library’s area.
…
There is yet one more catch about audiobooks that the serious language learner (improver) has to be aware of: some are abridged versions. Language learners (improvers) need the full, unabridged versions. They are obviously longer and presumably have higher production costs. In my (admittedly limited) experience (this was in German), what the creators of abridged versions do is miss out whole paragraphs. i.e. they don’t edit down paragraphs into shorter paragraphs. So it is at least theoretically possible to “re-sync” the recording with the original text of the book from time to time.
Hehe, your wish is my command! I happened to take some pictures of the shelves sometime last year so I could ask someone for advice about what to choose.
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Sorry @mikeellwood and @netmouse, when I say ‘quite a few’, further investigation reveals about 5, one of which is Bore Da. One way is to search for ‘Welsh’ in Audible, and filter out what’s not Irvine Welsh et al!
We have:
Bore Da (Gwennan Evans)
Coed Y Brenin (Colin Jones)
Blasu (Manon Steffan Ros). Over 8 hours this one!
Cwm Gwrachod (Colin Jones again)
I Ble’r Aeth Heul Y Bore? (Eirug Wyn)
That’s about it. Sorry to get your hopes up.
But it’s a start.
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Wyt ti’n seren Netmouse, neu beth? Ie, seren wyt ti! Diolch!
Edit: Oh good. I see “Y Lôn wen” is there. That is also one of the relatively few books also available as a parallel (Welsh-English) text.
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Diolch yn fawr iawn Colindale! Paid a phoenu Colin bach; that’s more than I’d expected! (and more than there used to be…well, I might have searched in the wrong way. Oh yes, IIRC, while there is a language search option in audible, it only works (or worked) for the major languages, and not Welsh.
(And while Irvine Welsh may be a perfectly nice guy, I have sadly grown to hate him because he always pops up in searches, where he is not wanted! (by me, anyway).
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Diolch, @Colindale! I bought Bore Da a while back when I still had my Audible subscription, but haven’t really tried to listen to it yet. I checked, and all the books in your list are also available in the US Audible store
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Well I just had a look at Audibles advanced search option and they only listed a choice of 12 possible languages so very little choice other than mainstream.
The first downloadable Welsh audiobook was only a year ago according to the following piece, so maybe things are chaning for the better?
http://cymraeg.gov.wales/news/index/llyfr-llafar?lang=en
but even though the link at the bottom of the piece is for Y Lolfa, i couldn’t easily find where the audiobooks are on there.
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And what would the welsh for audiobook be? maybe thats where I’m going wrong with my search (audiobook cymraeg?, surely something different!)