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.
One of the trickiest things you have to keep watching out for as a language learner is false friends – words that look the same as a word in your native language or another language you speak, but mean something completely different. One example of this phenomenon between Welsh and English is brain, which in …
When we’ve asked learners in the past for words they think are fun in Welsh, archfarchnad (supermarket) has come up more than once. It is a fun one, despite being hard to pronounce! And it’s also very relevant in most people’s daily lives – so let’s get into it and discuss all things to do …
The word for generous in Welsh is hael. When describing plural nouns, especially in older texts, you may see it rendered as haelion. However, this is not necessarily the norm today and it isn’t ‘incorrect’ to just use hael. hael generous Now, the first pitfall with this word is trying not to get it confused …
Today’s word of the day is the adjective rhyfeddol, which means wonderful or extraordinary. rhyfeddol wonderful / extraordinary This word comes from rhyfedd, which is also an adjective, meaning strange. The –ol doesn’t mean much; it’s just a common suffix for adjectives in Welsh. Examples of it in action could include dynol (human) from dyn …
A really useful word to add to your Welsh vocabulary that you might not even have thought to learn is morthwyl (hammer). Linguistically as well as practically, it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t come to mind until you really need it! Morthwyl is a masculine noun with the plural morthwylion (hammers). morthwyl hammer morthwylion …
Tongue is one of many, many English words that are spelt in a way that’s completely unintuitive. Luckily, Welsh is a near-totally phonetic language, and its word for tongue is tafod, which is lovely and simple to spell and pronounce. The plural for tongue is equally simple; it’s just tafodau (tongues). tafod tongue tafodau tongues …
Out of all the myriad good reasons that there are to learn a new language, the one that’s perhaps most important is simply that you find it diddorol (interesting). Without that, no matter how disciplined you are, you’ll seriously struggle to keep up the motivation to go on learning! diddorol interesting I chose this adjective …
Our Welsh word of the day today is a verb – dianc. This is the standard way of saying to escape or escaping in Welsh, though ffoi (to flee) is a common alternative, and sometimes cilio (to retreat) is used in this way. dianc to escape Here is how dianc mutates: Soft mutationddianc Nasal mutationnianc …
Arian (money) isn’t everything, but it certainly does make life a lot easier, so it’s no surprise that becoming cyfoethog is a primary goal for many people. In English, there are two separate words for cyfoethog: wealthy and rich. Many people see the former as signifying a higher level of moeth (luxury / ease), eiddo …
At Nadolig (Christmas) and Pasg (Easter), many people take the time to meticulously addurno (decorate) their cartrefi (homes), gerddi (gardens), and even places of gwaith (work) in accordance with the tymor (season). addurno to decorate You may notice that addurno looks and sounds a little bit like the English word adorn. They are indeed cognates …
