Nia is an aspiring writer from Powys, Wales. She attended Welsh-medium primary and secondary school, and is passionate about preserving the beautiful Welsh language and culture. She speaks some French, and is currently learning Arabic.
Language is more than just a way of communicating about the world – it is a way of understanding it. Often words don’t map neatly onto each other from one language to another. I find that this is particularly the case for adjectives. Parhaol is a great example of this, as it can mean lasting, …
Today’s Welsh word of the day is ymostwng. It has two meanings, one of which is a literal version of the other – it means either to bend down, or, more figuratively, to submit oneself / to capitulate. As with most Welsh words that begin with y, that first vowel is sometimes clipped off in …
Today’s word of the day may not be used in everyday ordinary conversation, but since it’s actually a grammatical term itself, it’s an excuse for us to talk a bit about one of the most crucial concepts to grasp in a new language – how to use adferfau (adverbs). Adferfau is the plural form of …
The Welsh verb meaning to save or saving is achub. Achub is a loan word from Latin, but it was borrowed into Brittonic rather than into Welsh. Normally this would mean that we would also see versions of it in Cornish and Breton, but in this case these languages’ words for to save are actually …
Today’s Welsh word of the day is gwlân, which means wool. One thing to watch out for with this word is that it looks very similar to gwylan (seagull)! Gwlân usually functions as a noun, in which case it’s masculine, but can also sometimes work as an adjective. Although it’s not that often at all …
A couple of months ago, we shared an article about the word unig (only or lonely). And today’s word is actually based on that one. We’re going to talk through the word unigolyn, meaning an individual. This is a masculine noun. It’s perfectly fine to use it to describe women, too, but even in these …
Adeg is a bit of a hard one to translate, because it doesn’t correspond perfectly to any single English word. Really it means time, but only in a very specific sense. Time in the abstract sense that usually first comes to mind is amser, as in expressions such as amser maith yn ôl (a long …
Today’s Welsh word of the day is gwisgo, which has four similar but subtly different meanings. Firstly, it can mean to dress oneself or someone else in dillad (clothing). Secondly, it can mean to dress or to decorate something. Thirdly, it can mean to put on a specific piece of dillad. Fourthly, it can mean …
Talking about teulu (family) is often one of the first things you want to do in a new language. Once you’ve learnt the terms for your closest perthnasau (relations) – mam (mother), tad (dad), chwaer (sister), and brawd (brother) being particularly important – one word that’s likely to be near the top of your list …
They say a llun (picture) paints a thousand geiriau (words), and indeed this very sentiment is expressed in the Welsh idiom cyfwerth llun a llith (a picture has the same worth as a lecture). On the other hand, our one gair (word) of the day today, llun, could refer to a thousand different kinds of …
