10 Welsh Words You Can’t Translate Into English – And One You Actually Can!

One of the most compelling reasons to learn a foreign language is that languages differ not only in the words they use, but in what those words represent. The concepts and experiences that are given form through language – sometimes with a single word, sometimes with many – vary from one tongue to another. These differences can reveal a great deal about the values, beliefs, and ways of seeing the world that shape the cultures of those who speak them.

Take the fact that speakers of Urdu typically greet each other not with hello or good day but with salam alaikum, a religious borrowing from Arabic that means peace be upon you. What this highlights about Urdu is that it’s a language closely associated with a particular religious identity, Islam, and that it’s the norm amongst speakers to default to a courteous and flowery way of speaking.

This means that by learning a foreign language, you’re not only gaining the ability to communicate with new people, but also opening yourself up to seeing the world in an entirely new way.

Here, I’ve brought together ten Welsh words that don’t have a direct English equivalent, highlighting subtle differences not only in Wales’ language, but its culture. It’s not that you can’t translate them into English at all, but that there’s no one single English word which could be used to express the same concept.

I’ll also finish off with a cheeky mention of the opposite – a word that is widely believed to be untranslatable, but is actually simpler than it seems!

1. Shwmae

It may well be that the first word you ever learnt in Welsh was shwmae (hello / how are you). If that’s the case, by now, it’s probably second nature! So you may not stop to notice that there’s actually not a direct equivalent of this in English.

Shwmae is a shortening of sut mae hi, common in South Wales. Northerners are more likely to say su’mae, but it’s the same thing. Sut mae hi literally means how is she, but here, hi is being used in a more abstract sense, so the speaker is asking the listener how things are going generally in their lives.

Today, it’s a very common go-to to open conversations in the same way as hello in English, but it doesn’t actually mean hello, simply because you can use it as a question too.

There are separate ways to say hello and how are you in Welsh, like the direct borrowing helô (hello) or the simple question sut wyt ti / sut ydych chi (how are you, the first is informal and the second formal or for groups). But shwmae is many people’s first port of call, whether they’re getting someone’s attention, greeting them, asking how they’re doing, or all of the above.

2. Eleni

My favourite kind of untranslatable word is the kind so useful you can’t help but wonder why English doesn’t have one like it. That’s certainly true of the wonderful adverb eleni, which means “this year.”

Eleni is actually a pretty old word in Welsh, in use at least since the 14^th century, and probably related to the word blwyddyn (year). Another Brittonic Celtic language, Cornish, has a similar word, which is hevleni or hevlena, suggesting they share a root in the proto-Brittonic language thought to have existed before Welsh, Cornish, and Breton differentiated.

You can use eleni exactly as you would use the adverbial phrase this year; it just has the added benefit of concision. I also think it’s a really pretty word, which is a bonus!

And this entry is a bit of a two-for-one, because Welsh also has a single word to express last year, which is llynedd. Again, we can see that this is a pattern across the Brittonic languages when we look at Cornish which has the words warleni and warlena. If only there was a word for next year too – but sadly this seems to be an omission.

3. Cyntefin

We have another time-related word up next, though one that’s a little less well-used in common parlance. Still, I had to include it because it’s got such a lovely meaning.

Cyntefin refers to the period at the end of gwanwyn (spring) and the beginning of haf (summer), and specifically is an alternative way to refer to mis Mai (May), and sometimes the beginning of mis Mehefin (June). And truly, that period really does feel like a season in itself, doesn’t it? Everything is green and blossoming, the days are getting longer, and the weather is warm without the harsh sun that turns the world brown in August.

Today, this word is mostly used in poetry, or in specific formal phrases like yr alban cyntefin (the spring equinox), which would be called cyhydnos y gwanwyn in casual spoken Welsh. Historically, it not only referred to the season as a whole but was another way of talking about the spring festival of Calan Mai / Calan Haf (May Day).

Interestingly, if you break down the components of the words, mis Mehefin literally mean middle summer and mis Gorffenaf (July) literally means end summer. Of them all Gorffenaf is the most obvious – you can almost see how the words gorffen (to finish) and haf (summer) have been smashed together!

4. Twt

Twt is one of those words that’s used very commonly in Welsh English too, largely because it’s hard to translate. It is generally more associated with South Wales, but it is not impossible to hear it in other parts of the countries.

Historically, twt is very easy to translate – it just means neat or tidy. However, it’s now very common to use it to mean a combination of small and cute, especially when you’re fussing over a plentyn (child) or an anifail (animal).

I use it often when I’d use cute in English, but it’s a little broader. This is firstly because it has added connotation of size which isn’t universally the case for cute or the loan word ciwt, and secondly because it can still be used in its original sense as tidy. Often, it combines multiple meanings!

You can also use twt as a noun, meaning a cute little person, a cute little animal, or a cute little thing. South Walians, even those who don’t speak Welsh at all, very commonly use twt or the soft mutation dwt as a term of endearment for beloved people and pets.

5. Eisteddfod

The eisteddfod is a kind of Welsh festival centred around competitions. The most important competitions are those in barddoniaeth (poetry) and cerddoriaeth (music), but there’s a huge range of disciplines from celf (art) to coginio (cooking) and drama (drama / acting) to ysgrifenlaw (handwriting).

The first eisteddfodau (eisteddfods) were held in the 1100s as a way of celebrating the arts, and the tradition was then revived in the 18^th century. It’s widely held that the popularity of eisteddfodau has been one of the primary factors contributing to the resurgence of the Welsh language and increased attention to our literature and traditions after many years of English cultural and linguistic dominance.

Today, huge national eisteddfodau are held yearly, one for adults and one for young people. In fact it’s a real rite of passage as a child to find yourself on the stage of your local community hall, reciting a poem in traditional Welsh costume! But these events also occur all over the world, and in some places the word is even used to refer to festivals of literature and arts that have nothing to do with Wales – which is quite amazing in its own right.

6. Acw

Speaking in English, there are two adverbs that convey place relative to the speaker; these are here and there. Put simply, here is where I am when I speak, and there is somewhere else.

Things get a bit more complicated yn y Gymraeg (in Welsh)! There are four gradations of place, which are yma, yna, acw, and yno. While yma is fairly easy to understand because it’s perfectly synonymous to here, the other three are a bit trickier.

Generally, yna is the closest, acw is further away (it’s quite like the archaic English word yonder), and yno is so far away that you can’t even point to it – it’s out of sight. But there is a little nuance in that sometimes yna is used in contexts where acw or yno would technically be most appropriate.

Complicating things further is the fact that acw has a second meaning. Many people in North Wales use this word to mean at home, at our place, or where I’m from. For example, if you live in Anglesey and you want to tell your new friend from Swansea a piece of interesting information about the island, you could use the phrase acw ym Môn (back home in Anglesey).

7. Tradwy

Yet another time-related word! It seems the Welsh like to be much more specific than the English when it comes to the date and time.

Tradwy has two meanings but the second is generally more useful. It can refer non-specifically to three days from another time, or it can be used for the day after the day after tomorrow. And no, I didn’t type that twice by mistake!

You may be wondering why Welsh has a word for the day after the day after tomorrow and not a word for the day after tomorrow. In fact there is a word for the day after tomorrow, and it’s very well-used. This is trennydd. The only reason I didn’t choose trennydd is that it would be untrue to say that it has no English equivalent – English does have a word for this, which is overmorrow, it’s just sadly obsolete.

Of course, Welsh has a word for the day before yesterday, too, which is echdoe – and yet again there’s an archaic English translation, in this case ereyesterday. To be honest, I think Welsh has got the right idea here, and we should bring these words back in English too!

8. Bonclust

Bonclust is a very silly word which often gets bandied about in media as an example of a weird Welsh word which doesn’t have an English translation, so I’m not being at all original including this here. However, I couldn’t in good faith leave it out, because it is, well, unique.

This noun means a blow to the ear, and it also exists in the form bonclustio, which means to hit or punch someone’s ears. It’s a weirdly old-fashioned word, recorded in Welsh texts since the 1300s, and it comes quite simply from the combination of the word bôn (base) and clust (ear). There are a couple of variants, like clusten and twll clust, suggesting it’s something the Welsh often needed to discuss!

To be fair, this seems less peculiar when you think about it — in English, we do have specific phrases like a clip around the ear or, more old-fashionedly, to box someone’s ears. It’s just that no one has ever bothered to condense them into a single, convenient word.

As far as I’m aware, bonclust is used in both North and South Wales, which is actually in itself fairly unusual for such a specific piece of vocabulary.

9. Cynghanedd

When I started this article, I hypothesised that the words a language has can tell us something about what is valued by the people who speak that language. No word on this list proves my point more than cynghanedd, which refers to a particular set of rules for arranging sounds in barddoniaeth (poetry) considered to be harmonious to the ear.

Cynghanedd includes odl (rhyme), cyflythreniad (alliteration), pwyslais (emphasis), and ailadroddiad (repetition), but it can’t be reduced to any of these. There are also a huge number of sub-types of cynghanedd appropriate to different styles of barddoniaeth.

Almost all traditional Welsh poetry makes heavy use of cynghanedd and abides by its rules and structure, and many modern Welsh poets utilise it too – even some writing in English!

The word is occasionally used to refer to harmony as in music. In my opinion this is best avoided, largely because it’s confusing, but also because there are plenty of other good words for musical harmony in Welsh, such as the go-to cytgord, the wonder perseinedd,or the very straight-forward loan word harmoni.

10. Corgi

I’ll end with a silly one. There’s no English word for a corgi precisely because the English took the word corgi from Welsh!

You can quite quickly identify this word’s Celtic ancestry if you take a moment to look at the elements. The first syllable, cor, is a Welsh word meaning dwarf. The second takes longer to  pick out but is even more familiar once you do… of course, it’s the soft mutation of ci (dog). And what better name for this tiny species than dwarf dog!

While most people know that corgis are a Welsh breed, it’s less common to be aware that it’s a Welsh word too, or that the plural should really be corgwn (corgis).

There aren’t many English words at all borrowed from the Welsh rather than vice versa, which is really surprising when you consider that Welsh is the living language closest to what would have been spoken by indigenous Britons prior to the development of English. If you’re curious about the examples that we do know of, however, we have an article all about this that you should check out!

And the one you actually can… Hiraeth

One piece of misinformation you yourself may have seen spread about Welsh is that the word hiraeth is completely unique. I’ve seen various definitions given for this word, including the bizarre a yearning for a time or place that never actually existed. Let’s clear up once and for all that this is not the case.

Now, it’s true that hiraeth is a beautiful and evocative word that can be applied to a range of situations. However, it’s really fairly easy to translate – it pretty much just means longing. It’s even structured the same way, because the first element, hir, is the Welsh translation of the adjective long.

Much like the English word longing, hiraeth is multi-dimensional. It can refer to grief, to homesickness, and to nostalgia, to longing for a lle (place) or for your teulu (family). And it’s very, very often used to talk about a longing for Cymru (Wales) itself.

But that very broadness is exactly what allows it to be translated between languages – and it certainly doesn’t mean something as ultra-specific as the definition I mentioned earlier. I’m not suggesting the word is any less beautiful, but it isn’t unique to Welsh!

There are far more Welsh words than I could ever include in a single article that have no direct one-word equivalent in English – whether because they capture ideas or traditions unique to Welsh culture, or simply because Welsh speakers have been wonderfully inventive in creating single words where other languages need entire phrases. I hope you’ve enjoyed this selection and discovered something new today.

However, if there is one you really wish I had included, let us know. It might become our next word of the day!