SSi Forum

What's Welsh for "now in a minute?"

#4

I always see these as “within the next minute” and “after a minute” but both used as roughly the same thing usually. I remember (I think) years ago @aran and @Iestyn disagreeing on which one to use. I remember a lot of things that didn’t actually happen though. :roll_eyes:

#5

I’m picturing this being resolved by means of a gladiators style pugil stick duel. I’ll be dissapointed if that wasn’t the case

#6

Well as @Toffidil said, in the course it’s mhen munud - at least in the South version.
So either they settled for Iestyn’s for the South and Aran’s for the North, or we missed the gladiator style duel that brought mhen to victory! :rofl:

#7

Yes, Iestyn has quite strong feelings about ‘ymhen munud’… I’ve got to admit I’ve got my own red lines on ‘just because people say it doesn’t make it okay’, which is why we don’t have ‘lyfio chdi’ in the course…:wink: But ‘mewn munud’ doesn’t put my hackles up in the same way… :slight_smile:

#8

Dear God. How typically Welsh to have a typically Welsh saying sparking off a typically Welsh debate. Typical!

#9

And thank you for your replies!

#10

Time, of course, is subject to relativistic influences and it is well known that North and South Wales occupy entirely different frames of reference - even different speeds. :laughing:

#11

If “now in a minute” conveys the meaning “very soon”, then around Ebbw Vale “now just” means “very recently” :smile:

#12

“And there it was, gone” is my latest favourite Wenglish.

#13

My favourite - which I catch myself saying a lot - is “No, I haven’t done it yet, I’ll do it again” (with the option of adding “now in a minute” of course :wink: )

#14

I know that you experience different times in different places, e.g. a Caribbean minute is whenever they get around to it and a New York minute is the shortest unit of time possible, i.e. between the light turning green and the person behind you sounding their horn.

#15

Wenglish.

To me, Wenglish is basically Welsh with a lot of imported English such as “Dere 'ma cariad, cael kiss”, Or the classic I heard the other day “Popeth yn gwd” or my granddaughter’s “Dim quite”.

Most of the examples here (including mine) are, IMO, English with regional accents or dialects which you’ll find anywhere in the UK, Ireland and beyond. “There it was, gone” is often attributed to Ireland.

To my ear, however, Wenglish and dialect English both add to the richness of the languages. It doesn’t need to be logical as long as it is grammatical. :imp: :wink:

#16

Ah interesting. I always took Wenglish to be a Welsh dialect of English: Celticised English as in the Talk Tidy Books.

Although I can see now see how it could also be an Anglicised Cymraeg.

I suppose a third possibility could be the mid sentence drift between the two Languages.

#17

I would take it the same way as @HuwJones with a mixture of Welsh words and English words but generally within a Welsh grammatic context. The word itself, Wenglish, would suggest this, to a point. Although Wenglish does still irritate me a little (it used to a lot) I find that I use it to help keep the flow of my Welsh. I think I also understand the psychology too with me not feeling that use of an English word necessarily comments negatively on the Welsh I speak. Beth bynnag, jyst a comment bach.

#18

I guess there are different types of Wenglish too - there is some sort of a comedy strand which I’ve noticed - where people will flip to English with a bit of a silly voice (particularly a posh voice of some sort) for comedy effect…

…and also have some sort of crazy mix of English and Welsh in a sentence as a punchline or for joke-effect…,for example, mostly Welsh but having a couple of vaguely silly sounding, random English words thrown in (at least when it pops out in the middle of a Welsh sentence)…

I don’t know if you heard the Ofergoelus play/ story on Radio Cymru…which used this a lot…although I was meaning ‘in real life’…

( This is however different to regular Wenglish…at least I think so… :thinking:)

Rich :slight_smile:

#19

When I was young I used to think of the Kerdiff or Cardiff accent as very English, but I now think it’s much more heavily influenced by Welsh and would love to hear more Kerdiffians speaking Welsh with a Kerdiff accent - when Frank Henessy sings in Welsh it just sounds like how it should sound - well it sounds natural and great to my ear.

#20

A couple of decades ago, Cardiff school Welsh had it’s own distinctive school sound - I’m tempted to say “posh,” but when I asked on the old forum whether there was such a thing as posh Welsh, the consensus was probably not. :pensive:

#21

I wonder in the case of Welsh schools year’s ago (and I’ve heard the same thing) if it was a case of different vocabulary. If I landed in the village I grew up in, spouting on about " a deficiency in part of the internal combustion system" - when the normal lingo might be “the engines knackered”, then I would be regarded as posh.

I wonder if it was more a case of being a bit too good and not having a more basic register to go with it.

#22

Rwan is also musical:-

#23

Dwi ddim yn siwr am be’ dwi’n going to say next ond mae’n actually quite haws i slippio between the dwy iaith mid brawddeg os ti’n rhugl in both.

But it is also possible to apply “Welsh thinking” to English words - and vice-versa. “Now in a minute” may be a case of this.