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 my worst habits is that at any minor inconvenience, I always make my friends say druan o Nia (poor Nia). Truan – mutated to druan in that example – is a Welsh adjective and noun, meaning poor as in miserable or pitiable, or poor thing. The plural form of truan as a noun …
Today’s word of the day is the adjective gwyllt. And in my opinion, gwyllt is one of those Welsh words that truly sounds like what it means – which is wild. gwyllt wild There are nuances to this meaning though. Gwyllt can mean a wild landscape, plant, or animal (in the latter case, often as …
When learning body parts in Welsh, you’ll be taught the word gwallt for hair. This is how we talk about hair on our head. However, hair on other parts of the body, or fur on animals, is blew. This is a collective noun, and the singular is blewyn (a hair). You also use blewyn for …
One of the first words a new speaker learns in Welsh is mae, which is all-important as it basically functions as an equivalent of the English is. It’s easy to confuse with the almost completely phonetically identical Mai, which is our word of the day today. Mai May There’s a reason that the Welsh Mai …
Today’s Welsh word of the day is melys, an adjective meaning sweet. melys sweet Melys describes something that is sweet in taste. Conversely, it’s less often used to mean a sweet smell, sound, or personality than it is in English – although it’s not completely impossible to hear it used in this sense. It’s also …
At some point in almost everyone’s life, they’ll suffer a briw (injury) or contract a salwch (illness), and will need to get a meddyg (doctor) to trin (treat) them. In English, this word treat has a variety of meanings, though, beside the most obvious medical one. And in Welsh it’s just the same! Read on, …
Are you at that point in your Welsh-learning journey where you’re confident in the words and phrases you do know, but you’d like to liven things up a bit? One good way to do that is by varying the amount of emphasis you place on different elements of speech. Or maybe you’re just starting out …
The Welsh word for a garden, whether it’s a public park full of rare and beautiful flowers, or your own backyard which you use to grow vegetables in, is gardd. The plural form is gerddi – though you may less commonly encounter garddau or geirdd. gardd garden Gardd was a borrowing from the Old Nose …
Did you know that Welsh has two, very different forms? These are literary and colloquial Welsh – the Welsh you’ll find in poetry and historical documents is very different to the Welsh spoken in even the most formal contexts. And some Welsh words are these days mostly used only in the former context. One of …
Mis Ebrill (the month of April) is my favourite time to visit my grandparents’ fferm (farm) in Cwm Elan (the Elan Valley). This is because it’s the height of tymor ŵyna (lambing season), which usually means I get to cuddle and bottle feed a lot of ŵyn (lambs) and mynnan (goat kids). Ebrill April The English …
