The SSiW Welsh Book Club 📖 📚 👓

Hi Ken! Hope you’re enjoying Sgwp as much as I did! :slight_smile: I’m open to offers, but how about a fiver plus postage? Postage will be about £1.50 as a normal large letter I think :slight_smile:

Hi @Cetra
Dŵr Dwfn was mentioned by @gruntius back in Sept 2018. He was not 100% keen, so I would be very interested in your opinion of it.
Sue

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Hey me too! How’s it going?

For being a really bad reader of Welsh, I’m impressed of being able to enjoy it even without a dictionary at hand!:smiley:(it:s my holiday reading, just like two years ago my goal was finishing Ssiw Level 1)

P.s. I haven’t really figured how difficult is the new book by @CatrinLliarJones, for us learners. Any more hints, @gruntius?

I’ll say that it’ll be a worthwhile challenge.

Basically it’s not aimed at learners, wasn’t written with learners in mind, it has an advanced vocabulary.

Catrin is, however, going to provide a vocab list to help with reading. I don’t think you should be put off giving it a go. :grinning::+1:

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Hi @Cetra - that works for me. So £6.50 for the package?
How shall I send the money?
Ken

I’m finding it straightforward to read. Nice to have a mystery to solve. Sometimes I hit a wall of words I don’t understand.But generally I plough on. If I come upon a word three times that I don’t know i’ll look it up. Otherwise I keep on reading. (I am a prolific reader)

I didn’t know about @CatrinLliarJones book. I’ll buy it for sure even if it is out of my reach at the moment.

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That’s great Ken - I’ll send you a private message :slight_smile:

That is so very kind of you Ken and Gisella, I really appreciate your support. :slight_smile:

Though it’s a lighthearted book for the most part, as Geraint said, it isn’t a book aimed at learners. It does have a lot of informal language, a lot of dialogue, but smatterings of more formal language and some challenging vocab here and there. But thanks to fabulous efforts from one or two long standing SSiW learners (Geraint included), I am putting together a comprehensive vocab list for those wanting to give it a go. I will also, of course, be available here to answer any questions anyone may have about the book.

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Alright, I’ll be happy to try especially knowing there’s going to be a comprehensive vocabulary list!
Only thing tomfigure out now is how to get it in Italy (preferably with reasonable shipping costs, since I happened to ask yesterday for a record and it was almost the same as the price of the actual record!:astonished:)

Well, the story is rather grim! If I’d been able to read Welsh when I got it, I might have been able to work that out - but at the time the back cover was largely incomprehensible, and I was chuffed that I understood the title! :rofl: I’m keen to read as much as I can in Welsh so that I can improve and, when I could eventually read it, it gave me a good work out in some of the verb tenses that are less familiar to me, so its served its purpose! :slight_smile:

Thanks, @Cetra. That’s helpful.
Maybe I’ll give it a miss for now. I do have 24 books lined up and waiting to be read so I really don’t need to buy any more for now.
Sue

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Wow! 24?! :slight_smile: And I thought I was a bookworm! You’ve got plenty to go at then! I’m down to my last 4… you might be sending me on another book shopping spree! :slight_smile:

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Loving these posts.

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Hi @CatrinLliarJones
I have recently received my copy of your book Adar o’r unlliw and wondered if you could send me a copy of the Vocab list when it’s available, please. Only recently finished level 2 so definitely not within my reach yet without some prompts but I trust Geraint’s comments and your offer of support. Not sure if you have my email address though? Is it possible to Direct message?

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Hi Robert!

Thank you so much for buying my book, I feel so honoured. The vocab list isn’t ready yet, but hopefully will be soon. I will post a link to it on the forum as soon as it is complete :blush:

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Just got my copy of Adar o’r Unlliw from Palas Print - too quick off the blocks for a signed copy, alas - and bought this at the same time.


It’s a quick read - only about 30 pages of picture book - but rather fun. It’s pitched, I guess, at native speaking adults reading with native speaking children, so although the vocabulary is mostly pretty straightforward it does have some slightly Literary language even at that age - for example, “Without us, there is no factory” is translated as hebddom nid oes ffatri, rather than, say, hebddon ni, does 'na ddim ffatri.

It was adapted into Welsh from a Catalan original, and appears now to be out of print in every language except Welsh & Basque, with no plans for another print run, unfortunately.

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I’ve just finished “Y Llythyr” by Helen Naylor, adapted by Dwynwen Teifi. What do you do if you find that your dad hid all the letters sent by your sweetheart who had to leave the country 50 years ago? The first part of the book is about the young people in a mining village and their doomed love. The second part is set fifty years later after the finding of the letters. Since there is a letter as a foreword to the book, I have not given much away there. I had to wait to the very end to find out what would happen, and it was worth it. The book is at Canolradd level and part of the Cyfres Amdani, so it has useful vocabulary. The language is Southern if that matters. @Hishiv reviewed this book back in 2018, but I thought that it was worth another mention.

And I love the idea of a book written in Catalan and now available only in Welsh and Basque, @RichardBuck
Sue

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Even better, I’d love a book with the two languages side by side!

I was given a book called ‘Cwrw am ddim’ by Chris Cope on my way through Cardiff recently. I’ve started reading it, and rather bizarrely I’m having more of a problem with the American references than anything else. The author is an American who fell in love with the Welsh language and started learning it, but it uses analogies to things, people, and events, that might be very familiar to US citizens, but I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time!
The Welsh is great though - not quite literary, but certainly of a high standard, so good for expanding vocabulary if you’re more of an experienced Welsh learner. Also encouraging to think someone can come from a totally non-Welsh background and end up being able to write at that level.

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Now I’m curious about this book, even though I might not be able to understand many references myself!

Speaking of books…have you found a reliable source to get a good selection of books in Welsh on the other side of the Channel without spending a fortune in shippings? :grin:

I still have a couple of unread ones from my last trip there, but now I’ve finished Sgŵp in a week, without a dictionary I’m confident about needing more books to read soon! :wink:
(I might end up asking to the bookstore i’n Aberteifi where I got most of the previous ones from, but better have more options)

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