You know you are learning Welsh when

You begin to see Welsh words from nonsense letters on American license plates, such as 3456 DWR or 1326 CWM…

12 Likes

I’m guessing you’re referring to the Lammas community, which is indeed a wonderful project, but wouldn’t it be nice if it was called Gwyl Awst ? … this is from Wikipedia
"In medieval times the feast was sometimes known in England and Scotland as the “Gule of August”,[2] but the meaning of “gule” is unclear. Ronald Hutton suggests[3] following the 18th-century Welsh clergyman antiquary John Pettingall[4] that it is merely an Anglicisation of Gŵyl Awst, the Welsh name of the “feast of August”. OED and most etymological dictionaries give it a more circuitous origin similar to gullet; from O.Fr. goulet, dim. of goule, “throat, neck,” from L. gula “throat,”. "

3 Likes

I love etymology, even if the origins are often unclear (but FWIW, I’ll happily go with the Welsh explanation! :slight_smile: ).

1 Like

The day I noticed the brand name tag in my undershirt and tried to work out what it had to do with ‘history’!

7 Likes

Probably was, but I’d travelled such a long way for the experience that I didn’t want to “cheat” unless it was absolutely necessary. And did I mention how much fun it was?

3 Likes

I was wondering what you call the kind of egg in Welsh where it’s been heated and it’s flat and white on the outside and yellow in the middle.

So I head to Geiriadur yr Academi to translate English to Welsh and type in…

ffried

(Aren’t they called ffried eggs in English?)

3 Likes

Wy 'di ffrio. :blush:

2 Likes

Something interesting I’m seeing is that while my ability to understand conversational/spoken Welsh has increased, my ability to speak random phrases…like those at the ends of lessons in Course 3…has decreased.

For example:

When listening to Pobol y Cwm recordings I’m able to pick up more unknown words in context and understand the conversations as spoken rather than fighting to translate to english (if that makes sense). I also am picking up different forms of verbs and nouns (i.e. colled vs colli or tai as plural of ty)

But, at the same time, I struggle with the last part of the Course 3 lessons for the short form verbs (gwelai i, des i, des ti, etc) when the phrases are different. I trip over past vs present/future of verbs when the phrases are mixed together and when the tenses are mixed in a single phrase.

(This technically doesn’t fall under “you know you are learning…” but it’s related so I’m putting it here instead of creating a new thread for it.)

5 Likes

You dream about going to the upcoming SSIW party and in your dream you are trying really hard to speak only Welsh.

3 Likes

Bear in mind that stuff is pretty brutal - I’d expect lots of first language speakers to have hiccups in there… :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Phew! I feel better then…

2 Likes

Well I think that I’m pretty into Welsh when I’ve noticed I’ve got 6 tabs open in my browser and everyone of them is Welsh language or to do with Cymru.
1 .Wicipedia page on Owain Glyn Dwr
2. BBC iPlayer - Y Llyfrgell
3. Youtube DistantDreamer93 Welsh music channel
4. Memrise - Welsh common nouns
5. BBC News item on the Welsh local elections
6. SSiW forum
hmmmm…
…and Radio Cymru’s on in the kitchen!

12 Likes

And they say men are no good at multi-tasking!!! :grinning:

3 Likes

Your 4 year old (who isn’t learning Welsh) looks at your partner (who isn’t learning Welsh), sitting up in bed with a weekend morning cup of tea, and says “Dw i’n hoffi coffi”; your partner responds, “No, it isn’t coffee, it’s tea,” and the 6 year old sister (who isn’t learning Welsh) nods sagely and adds, “Panad o de.” :slight_smile:

21 Likes

That’s my ‘There’s hope for this language!’ moment for this week - diolch yn fawr! :star: :star2:

6 Likes

…Aaand also when your partner (who still isn’t learning Welsh) starts to watch Rownd a Rownd with you twice in succession (I currently watch each half of each episode twice, once with Welsh subtitles and then again with English) because she wants to find out what’s going to happen now that Jac has spoken to Lowri about you-know-what :smile:

9 Likes

When your friend replies on Twitter about where to get dahlia plants cheaply, and you read the last word in Welsh and think, ‘Well yes, obviously…’ :grinning:

20 Likes

When you read fiction and assume made-up words and names with “dd” and “ll” are pronounced as if they are Welsh.

Example: “Tawaddud”

6 Likes

No offense to anyone else but if this was a competition we could all stop right now because we have our winner! This is genius.

5 Likes

I do that all the time!