Do you have a hoff liw (favourite colour)? A lot of people go for porffor (purple). In Welsh as in English, this word functions mainly as an adjective, though it can also be used as a masculine noun. porffor purple It’s no coincidence that porffor starts with the letter p, just like the English translation. …
What’s the single best thing you can do to improve your skills and confidence when speaking a new language? The answer, without a doubt, is sgwrsio (chatting). sgwrsio chatting Since this word comes from sgwrs (a conversation), you might initially be temped to translate it as conversing. This is a fine translation, but I think …
The Welsh word hudol can be used in a variety of ways. Most simply, it means magical, a synonym of dewinol. But it’s also very often used to mean enchanting / bewitching, either in a literal way or to describe attractiveness. As an extension of this, people historically might have also translated it along the …
A few months ago, we published an article about the Welsh word hawdd (easy). I’m sure many of you read that article and thought the word anodd (difficult) would be much more relevant to your everyday life! anodd difficult Most likely, it originally comes from the word hawdd itself, with a negative prefix added to …
If there’s one thing that’s enwog (famous) about Cymru (Wales), it’s got to be y tywydd gwael (the bad weather)! As you can see from that phrase, the Welsh word for weather is tywydd. The concept of weather is generally considered uncountable, so it’s not normal to need to use a plural for it. However, …
Some Welsh words are incredibly tricky for me to remember, but today’s word – dibynnu (a verb-noun meaning to depend or to rely) – isn’t one of them! I always link it to the phrase “the bunny,” said as if I were speaking an urban Brooklyn accent. If you can find little memory hooks like …
The word ffrind in Welsh, clearly borrowed from English, may seem a bit redundant. Especially since Welsh does actually have its own native Celtic word for friend, which is cyfaill. But if there’s one thing I love about Welsh, it’s that when words are borrowed, they quickly become ‘Welshified’. So in my mind, ffrind (plural: …
What’s your favourite diwrnod yr wythnos (day of the week)? At the moment, I’ve been really enjoying dydd Mercher (Wednesday), since I get to work from home, but when I was a child, I hated it! It was when my primary school had a trip to the pwll nofio (swimming pool), and although I did …
It’s hard to imagine what landscapes like those of the UK looked like before humans began to interfere with them. Nature historians believe that most of Britain was covered with a vast expanse of coed (trees or woodland) that is referred to as The Wildwood (Y Goedwig in Welsh, literally just meaning The Forest). It’s …
Like its English equivalent fair, the Welsh word teg has a variety of meanings. It can mean fair as in just or equitable, but can also refer physical beauty and pleasantness, or even just a particularly nice day. Used in a lot of literature and poetry, it’s a word with a significant place in Welsh …