Today’s Welsh word of the day is chwantu (to desire, want, long for, or lust for), a word which may be hard to pronounce, but which shouldn’t be hard to use.
chwantu
to desire
Chwantu – and the synonymous alternative chwantio – are verbal forms of chwant, a noun meaning a desire, a lust or a craving, in particular one that is perceived as excessive. Chwant is similar to words like blys and awydd; of the three awydd is most often used to refer to normal, every-day wants and desires, though it still conveys a certain degree of intensity. The plural form of chwant is chwantau, which looks very similar to chwantu so be careful!
One good way to remember what chwant and chwantu mean is that they literally have the English word want inside of them – although the pronunciation is different, like ant or pant.
These words come from the proto-Celtic *swantos, the etymology of which is unknown. Unfortunately it’s unlikely that it has anything to do with the proto-Germanic *wanatona from which English want comes, so the similarity in meaning is nothing but a helpful coincidence.
Nid brysio yw bywyd at ddyfodol sy’n cilio, na chwantu am orffenol y dychymyg.
Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past.
– “The Bright Fields”, R. S. Thomas, translated in part here
Chwant is also the parent word of trachwant (excessive greed, desire, or lust) and chwantus (covetous, lustful). Chwant is often used as a translation of lust when enumerating y Saith Pechod Marwaol (the Seven Deadly Sins), and trachwant of greed.
Here is how chwantu takes conjugation:
| Future | Conditional | Past | |
| First person singular | Chwanta i I will desire | Chwantwn i I would desire | Chwantais i I desired |
| First person plural | Chwantwn ni We will desire | Chwanten ni We would desire | Chwanton ni We desired |
| Second person singular / informal | Chwanti di You will desire | Chwantet ti You would desire | Chwantaist ti You desired |
| Second person plural / formal | Chwantwch chi You will desire | Chwantech chi You would desire | Chwantoch chi You desired |
| Third person singular | Chwantith o/e/hi He / she will desire | Chwantai fo/fe/hi He / she would desire | Chwantodd o/e/hi He/she desired |
| Third person plural | Chwantan nhw They will desire | Chwanten nhw They would desire | Chwanton nhw They desired |
In general, talking about what you want, desire and need in Welsh can be a tricky business. This is because the two most common words in this semantic field, eisiau (a want / a need) and angen (a need), are technically nouns, but are used as if they were verbs in most sentences, creating all sorts of interesting grammatical ramifications. You can read more about this in our article on eisiau.
Another complication comes from regional differences – while North Walians tend to use eisiau for wanting and angen for needing, those from the South are more likely to reserve eisiau for need situations and to instead use moyn, a shortening of ymofyn (literary form of to ask) for want.
Mae hi wedi blino’n llwyr; mae hi’n chwantu am gwsg.
She is very tired; she’s craving sleep.
The good news is chwantu is much less complicated. It is used as a verb, with no grammatical trickery. Simply insert am directly afterwards, causing a soft mutation if applicable to the following word, which should be the object of the desire.
So then we have the phrase chwantu am, best translated as desiring, lusting after, or really wanting something.
This quite intense connotation has positive and negative ramifications.
On the upside, it’s a great word to really stress quite how much you want something. For example, chwantu am fwyd (wanting / desiring food) suggests that someone is really, really hungry, perhaps even llwglyd (starving). This is in contrast to the usual construction eisiau bwyd (wanting food) which is the most common way to say that you are hungry in the majority of Wales.
The noun form is also commonly used in the South of Wales in a more casual way. Mae gen i chwant diod or mae chwant diod arna i would both be ways of saying I really want a drink.
One example of a context where chwantu is useful is when discussing addiction. To say that someone has an addiction in Welsh we use the construction bod yn gaeth i rywbeth (literally being bound / captive to something). There aren’t a lot of words that can capture the intensity of the strong feeling of need and desire that comes with caethiwed / caethineb (addiction), but chwantu and chwant are sometimes used here.
It’s also useful in poetic writing, to create emphasis and vary your vocabulary.
The downside to chwantu’s intensity is that it is generally used sparingly, so that its meaning isn’t diluted. This is especially the case because it can mean to lust in a sexual sense, which may not always be the meaning that you’re going for!
Both chwant and chwantu are in much less common usage than they were a few centuries ago. Perhaps this is partly to do with the fact that the words were often used in a crefyddol (religious) and therefore critical sense, describing chwantau that were seen as pechodau (sins). In a less Cristnogol (Christian) UK today, we rarely say to lust or to covet in English, and similarly there aren’t many occasions where we’d need to say chwantu in Welsh.
Have you come across chwantu before? If not, will you be using it from now on?
