Welsh Word of the Day: Ifanc (young)

The Welsh word for young or youthful is ifanc. It can be used to describe people, animals, or plants. The plural form is ifainc.

Ifanc comes from the proto-Brythonic *jowank, meaning young. This root has another descendant in modern Welsh: ieuanc, which also means young or youthful.

Both words are widely understood, but ieuanc is more likely to be used in poetry or literature, and ifanc is more likely to be used in everyday life. Ieuanc is pronounced like this:

There’s not really much variation as to whether ifanc or ieuanc is preferred in North or South Wales. But ifanc is sometimes pronounced slightly differently further South, like this:

This is how I would naturally pronounce it as a speaker from mid-Wales – but the first pronunciation given is more common.

Younger in Welsh is ifengach or iau, with both being perfectly normal, but the latter is slightly more common, especially in everyday phrases. For example, younger brother is brawd iau, and younger sister is chwaer iau. Youngest is ieuaf, ifancaf or ieuengaf.

Welsh also has what is called an ‘equative’ form of adjectives, which isn’t the case in English. They tend not to be used in day-to-day conversation, but they can come in quite handy in descriptive, persuasive, or expository writing. The equative form of ifanc is ieuenged, and it means as young as. In the South, ifanced would be more common, and might be shortened to ‘fanced.

One common related word is ieuenctid, which means youth. This can refer to either youth as in the state of being young, or to youths as in young people. For the latter, you could also say pobl ifainc or simply yr ifainc (the young).

Interestingly, the phrase the younger generation is translated as y to ifanc, which literally means the young roof! This comes from the original phrase y to sy’n codi, meaning the roof that’s rising. Similarly, the older generation is yr hen do (the old roof).

Ieuenctid can’t be used to describe one young person; in this case you just need to say dyn ifanc or gŵr ifanc for a young man, and merch ifanc or geneth ifanc for a young woman. Llanc has a similar meaning and connotation to youth, the singular noun, and you can also say llances, which is the feminine form.

The adverb youthfully is yn ifanc.

You might have noticed that in some cases above, I used the plural form of ifanc, which is ifainc. This is technically required when describing a plural noun, but these days, using the plural form of an adjective in Welsh is becoming less and less common, so it doesn’t sound wrong to say either ifanc or ifainc in these contexts.

The opposite of ifanc is hen, old.

Hen is a very important adjective in Welsh because it’s used not only to express age, but also as a diminutive. For example, a common lullaby, Heno Heno (Tonight Tonight), refers affectionately to the children listening as hen blant bach (little old children). Hen is also one of the few Welsh adjectives that usually comes before, rather than after, the noun.

It’s interesting that in Welsh you’d be far more likely to use hen to describe children than ifanc. As mentioned, hen is often used as a term of endearment for babies and children, whereas ifanc is not used to describe children.

This is because the equivalent of young children is not plant ifainc but plant bychain (little children). But you might sometimes use ifanc to describe their parents, as in the case of a pâr ifanc (recently married couple).

The expression young blood to mean youth can be directly translated into Welsh as gwaed ifanc. But another idiomatic way of expressing youth or childhood is the lovely bore oes, literally meaning the morning of life.

There are plenty of idioms referring to youth and age in Welsh. You might describe someone as having hen ben ar ysgwyddau ifainc (an old head on young shoulders), or lament that hen y teimlir ergydion a gaed yn ifanc (the old suffer the blows they took when they were young).

However, the most well-known of these is probably yr hen a ŵyr, yr ifanc a dybia (the old know, while the young presume). You can see that like in many cultures, yr ifainc in Wales are definitely taught to respect our elders!