Middle Welsh

Yeah, I know what you are saying, and feel it myself. When I started learning, my desire was to speak the Welsh my family speak, the Welsh I heard where I was growing up.

I think I’ve mentioned before about classes where people will swear they can’t speak any Welsh, don’t know a word of it, but then on the first classes will react suspiciously to what they have been taught, saying “that doesn’t sound right!”, and being of course right in the local dialect commonly.

But whatever Welsh you are taught, it’s never going to be the exact form of Welsh you are ultimately looking for. People don’t speak exactly the same way in an area or even a family. If you go with the flow, you will end up speaking the dialect you are familiar with - with the added benefit of being familiar with a more standard language.

Again, my father is a first language Welsh speaker always regretted not paying more attention to Welsh classes when he was younger. (Apparently given by a very good and approachable teacher, unusual for the time!). So such things are useful to anybody, whatever their level of Welsh!

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I totally agree and I admit to my sense of irrationality about these sorts of things. Basically my instincts have always driven me in the opposite direction to perhaps someone who has always spoken Welsh at home and wants to expand and refine their language skills. I feel pretty comfortable and confident about things at the moment and a bit more at ease about it, becuase I have managed to fill in some of the gaps and realise that these informal language skills are quite individualistic and something that has to be acquired by listening and speaking.

Interestingly now I would also like to know how to speak a few things very formally, it would provide a nice contrast on occasions and very appropriate for talking to some people.

It is all a journey and I can very easily understand local people talking now and feel much more comfortable with what I am able to say.

Just so you know, what you may think about individual examples or not, there is a bigger difference between such forms as you give in Welsh and corresponding literary/spoken forms in English.

Saying “Yr ydwyf i yn myned yr awr hon” would be nothing like saying “I am going now” in English, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend any course using that as the form to be concentrated on.
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Absolute nonsense! :blush:

Absolutely. They are very important things, some of which can and should be taught, but a language is going to end up being such an individual thing that it would be impossible to have one noticeably tailored towards you - and picking up a bit of standard is always a good thing, in my experience!

No, I not only understand what you say, and why you say it, I feel the same things about the language, and what you say makes a great deal of sense.

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I had an Uncle who none of us thought could speak any Welsh. He came back to Wales for a visit after living in Canada for twenty years and we visited a chapel. He stood in the pulpit and gave an amazing sermon - all in Welsh, in the style of a stereotypical old fashioned preacher, full of fire and brimstone. This language, full of "yr ydwyf"s and "yr hwn"s reminds me of that and I love it, but it really is for that sort of an occasion. It can be very powerful and nostalgic, but I suspect that in the street it would make you sound like a complete lunatic.

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Yes, the option of having a different type of language in Welsh, a wider range of language in that way (than in say, English) is, if used ‘correctly’ and well (which you could say for any use of language, of course!) rather a good thing! It gives new and different opportunities of expression to people who are familiar and used to the various forms the language, from the most spoken up to the most biblical/literary.

If you aren’t familiar with using and speaking Welsh though, then yes, you could fall into the trap of using it ‘incorrectly’ (ie in circumstances where other people definitely wouldn’t), and would sound more insane than if you constantly did the same with the equivalent in (eg) English!

But horses for courses, of course, and differences like that are what make languages interesting!

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Yes, I’m sure you can use these things sort of things for effect - to be a bit quirky now and again and in small measures. They certainly will make someone sit up and listen, but you have realise what you are doing before going there.

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Absolutely - and anywhere along the spectrum (not necessarily the extremes) adds to possibilities for expression in whatever medium you are using for that expression.

Mind you, horses for courses again!
The only chaired bard I know (as you know, in Wales that [only one!] is a sentence which requires an apology rather than being boasting!) is notable for using very accessible and understandable language in his poems.

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Strange that you should mention that. I’m just setting off for a family weekend in Newcastle and the rural surroundings in a few minutes. Although I’m from Newcastle, I was never taught the local lingo, which was frowned upon at the time but is now the in-thing. Wish me luck!

On the plus side, I’ve downloaded/uploaded (?) SSiW Course 3 onto my phone ready for the round trip. Hopefully, I’ll return fluent in both Geordie and Cymraeg!

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No - from my experience and others on here, simply having the language on in the background so to speak is not enough to make you a speaker. Children must learn languages by more than simply hearing them - the act of speaking, being encouraged to speak them and being corrected by other people when you are young must be vitally important.

Some simple things, that I did say or heard repeatedly as a child did stick, but nothing to really write home about.

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You’re welcome.

Having one parent who spoke Welsh sometimes seems one of commonest upbringings with Welsh people!

I think the point is that I, like most people in Wales, whether they had family who speak it or not, did pick up a bit of Welsh. It’s impossible not to - it’s in the ether. There are very few, if any, Welsh people who speak no Welsh.

Possibly this goes towards making the standard for calling yourself a “Welsh speaker” far higher than it would be for another language.
( Of course you know a bit of Welsh! Everyone does. That’s not what I mean by “Do you speak Welsh”.)

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I think in Brittany, there are four quite distinct dialects aren’t there and one of them is very different to the others, so bridging them was always going to be a difficult task. In Wales the differences are more nuances and pronounciations, with odd word differences here and there, but thankfully those differences are now accomodated more or less and the methods have evolved into something that seems to satisfy most people. In was inevitable in the early days that there would be issues and I guess I was one of those guinea pigs who did a variant of Cymraeg Byw.

There was a really interesting effort in the early part of the twentieth century by a Cornishman, Caradar (A S D Smith).

He published a set of three teach yourself Welsh books, wanting to “repay something of the debt I owe to the welsh people” because the Welsh language had “unveiled much that was hidden,” and “helped him to understand and love Wales”
Well, that’s nice isn’t it!
But then I’ve always found the Cornish to be good at that sort of thing!

Anyway, in his book he stresses that his aim is to encourage the reader to speak Welsh, “and that at his own fireside, without the aid of a teacher: to break down that initial shyness most of us feel when trying to talk a strange language for the first time: and to set him on the road to a more comprehensive knowledge of this fine old tongue”.
Admirable aims, which SSiW does very well!
Well, it’s interesting to see what he did with the limitations of the printed word.

Stressing that “it would sound stiff and unnatural to say, for example, 'Pa beth yr ydych chwi yn ei weled? (10 syllables) for “What do you see?” when “beth yr ydych chi’n weld?” (6 syllables) is the coll. form, still further contracted in rapid speech to
NW : “be dych chi’n weld?” (4 syllables)
SW: “be’ch chi’n weld?” (3 syllables)”

he goes on to give example after example of Welsh sentences to be read aloud, in full literary form and spelled colloquial versions (spelled with a phonetic alphabet of letters and symbols explained at the beginning), with sentences to be translated into both - as in

"a) Say aloud in Welsh, and think of the meaning:

  1. Yr wyf wedi cofio. 2. Y mae ef wedi anghofio. 3. A ydych chwi wedi bod yn cysgu? 4. Nac ydwyf; nid wyf ddim wedi bod yn cysgu. [etc…]

b) Colloquial pronunciation:

  1. roo’-i wed’-i kov’-yo. 2. Ma’-e wed’-i ang-hov’-yo. 3. ud’-ich-i wed’-i bod yn kus’-gi? 4. Nag’-doo; doo’-i thim wed’-i bod un kus’-gi. [etc… but using more symbols than I can reproduce here.]

c) Translate aloud as in b); then write as in a)

  1. I have remembered. 2. He has forgotten. [etc…]"

Sorry for that lengthy tangent! But it’s an interesting attempt at trying to teach

  1. Different forms of Welsh alongside each other, and
  2. Spoken Welsh at a time when there were no audio recordings easily available.

Anyhow, just out of interest, as I said! One of the many forms of teaching Welsh which you speak of.

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I’ve got them in three separate booklets. Maybe you have a later series. :blush:

Yes, You do like the same rubbish I do!

We even quote much the same things from the books! :blush:

In my opinion they are very good for the time - even if the “colloquial pronunciation” is, by necessity, restricted to one form.

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Mind you, I had always assumed the first print came out about 1925 from the introduction, but there is no date on mine! So I have no idea if there was more than one print run, and when they were actually printed. I’ve always slightly wondered.

Do yours look anything like this, and is there a date on yours?

Well, I’ve just noticed that Caradar’s books are recommended as further studies from the Teach Yourself Welsh books (the TJ Rhys Jones ones) from eg 1969, so the Caradar books were presumably at least reasonably available then, and not forgotten!

Shows how one man’s love for another country and interest in it’s culture and people can benefit a lot of others.

He obviously had a very good ear for the sounds he heard, and spoke a lot of Welsh with a lot of people- though the "colloquial Welsh’ pronunciations are a bit of a mixed bag dialectically speaking, I sometimes find myself thinking “of course! that is how you describe it!” over a certain pronunciation.

Yes, part three is the reader.
No dates at all anywhere on mine though (I had to work out a date from the info in the preface), and printed in Cardiff.

Whatever the case, they must have been printed commonly and late enough to be recommended in a popular 1969 book, so thankfully not forgotten!

I have seen them elsewhere, but only once - and that’s with the advantage of being able to scour Welsh second-hand bookshops on an almost daily basis!
It’s an interesting book, and an interesting way of learning - I can’t help thinking he misses a trick by not having lessons translating new sentences from English into Welsh.

But really useful books even now in many ways, and would have been tremendously useful then.

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I didn’t use the word popular about the book, simply that it was not forgotten. However many copies were printed, I’m not sure how often you would expect to come across books like that, especially soft backs, as you say. I don’t really expect to see any Welsh books from that era on a regular basis.

It was a bit of a (gratifying) revelation to me when I started listening (or trying to listen) to “Y Talwrn” on Radio Cymru, that a lot of it sounded quite accessible (and also very humorous sometimes).
Although it’s still quite a learning curve, of course.

Yes, I’ve found the language used in poetry to be often not as difficult and tortuous as is sometimes implied- - but I do rather understand and like the phrase [quote=“mikeellwood, post:45, topic:4617”]
trying to listen
[/quote]

in relation to it!

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