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, we’re going to talk about the humble hen. The Welsh word for a hen, often used more broadly to refer to the whole species of chickens, is iâr. The plural form of iâr is ieir (hens / chickens). iâr a hen ieir hens / chickens Iâr is a very old word in Welsh. We …
A lot of Welsh words are borrowed from English. Stereotypically, we imagine this as having happened very recently – the younger generation adopting English slang, or people taking English words for new technologies. But it’s actually been happening for hundreds of years, and many Welsh borrowings of English words have transformed in such a way …
Our Welsh word of the word today is cyfarfod, which is both a verb and a noun. As a verb, it means to meet, and as a noun, it means a meeting – as in the kind that you have yn y gwaith (at work). The plural form of the noun is cyfarfodydd. cyfarfod to …
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 …
