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.
Today’s Welsh word of the day is nefoedd, which means heaven or heavens. The singular-plural binary is a bit blurred here, because nefoedd is the word that is actually used most of the time in Welsh to talk about heaven, but it is formulated as a plural. Grammatically some people treat it this way – …
The primary school I went to had two separate ‘streams’, one taught in English with supplementary Welsh lessons, and one taught in Welsh with supplementary English lessons. I remember that the English stream kids used to find the Welsh word moron absolutely hilarious – because it sounds like the English moron meaning idiot. Of course, …
Oh no – another one of those awful Welsh words with no vowels! Of course, this isn’t really the case; today’s word of the day gwydr (glass) features y, which is a vowel in Welsh, and w, which is usually a vowel in Welsh, although only a semi-vowel in the word gwydr. Gwydr is a …
One concept grammar nerds in English always wrestle with is the double negative. You know, when someone says something along the lines of I didn’t do nothing, actually meaning I didn’t do anything. In Welsh, double negatives are actually the way to go! This is because Welsh is one of many languages that have what …
From The Queen Vic in Eastenders to Y Deri in Pobol y Cwm, the prominence of tafarnau (pubs) in British TV is just one clue to how important they are to this little island’s culture. The Welsh word for a pub is tafarn. tafarn pub tafarnau pubs This is how tafarn mutates: Soft mutationdafarn Nasal …
Today, our Welsh word of the day is mwys. It actually has more than one meaning – but today we’ll mostly be talking about its meaning of ambiguous, for which it’s synonymous with its sister-word amwys. mwys ambiguous In particular, mwys is a useful word in Welsh because it’s used to translate a pun. There’s …
One of the best anrhegion (presents) I’ve ever received was something I didn’t even know existed until I opened it! My rhieni yng nghyfraith (parents in law) gave me a hedgehog house – basically a little shelter to put in yr ardd (the garden) along with food, to help out hedgehogs in the cold gaeaf …
Of all the flaws, one that I’d definitely love to remove from myself is diogi! This noun means laziness or sloth, and it also works as a verb meaning roughly to laze about. diogi laziness / to laze about Both senses of diogi are derived from the adjective diog (lazy). The addition of the -i …
Food is something that brings us together across nations, cultures, and languages. You may not know the first thing about a country, but if you show appreciation and gratitude for the coginio (cooking / cuisine), you’re instantly much more likely to make yourself a popular guest. You could even say that food is something of …
There aren’t many things that evoke as much llawenydd (joy) as dawnsio (dancing), whether it’s at a clwb (club), a gwers (lesson / class), or just around your cegin (kitchen). I suppose that’s why we have the phrase dawnsio o lawenydd (to dance for joy) in both languages! One of my favourite Welsh-language canueon (songs) …
