Let’s face it – no one really enjoys being impolite but sometimes you have no choice but to tell someone to be quiet. This may be because they are being too loud, as anyone with rambunctious children will understand, or because they are being offensive. Whatever the reason, it is useful to know how to …
In English, we have things pretty easy. If you want to confirm a statement, you say “Yes!” and if you want to negate a statement, you say “No!” It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that! In Welsh, however, the type of yes or no you need to use ultimately depends on the tense of …
If you stop and think about how many ways there are of saying “goodbye” in English – from the standard “bye” and “see you later” to the more niche expressions like “cheerio” to “toodle-loo” – it should come as no surprise that Welsh has a wide range of phrases too. Let’s take a look at …
When you sign up for a Welsh course, one of the very first survival phrases you’ll learn is “How are you?”. This cyfarchiad (greeting) can be expressed in two different ways: Sut wyt ti? How are you? Another casual greeting you’ll certainly encounter is Sut mae? (Hello, how are things?) which is pronounced as Shwmae? …
Cael is a very common verb in Welsh. But it can also be a minefield! Fret no longer – let’s take a detailed look at the do’s and don’ts of cael in Welsh. There are two main verbs in English that can be translated as cael – these are ‘to get’ and ‘to have’. However, …
Before we begin, don’t worry – there aren’t any F words in this blog. In fact, none of the profanities we have in Welsh are as offensive and inappropriate as the English ones in terms of how they’re used and perceived socially. Although we do have profanity in Welsh, a lot of them are interchangeable …
When October 31st arrives, much of the world celebrates Halloween these days. But in Wales, the night and day that follows are steeped in traditions much older than pumpkins and trick-or-treating. These are Noson Galan Gaeaf (“the night before the first day of winter”) and Calan Gaeaf (“the first day of winter”), marking the transition …
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 …
In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at one of the most common Welsh words: mae. You probably know by now that mae can mean is as in Mae cinio’n barod! (Dinner is ready!) or are as in Mae Elen a Gwilym yn gadael (Elen and Gwilym are leaving). But did you know …
One of the most compelling reasons to learn a foreign language is that languages differ not only in the words they use, but in what those words represent. The concepts and experiences that are given form through language – sometimes with a single word, sometimes with many – vary from one tongue to another. These …