Being from Canada, I’m often asked here in Wales if I’ve ever encountered a bear. Thankfully, the only ones I’ve seen have been at the zoo, but I have friends who’ve come across them while hiking in the Canadian wilderness. In Welsh, this iconic and feared animal is known as arth. arth bear Arth is …
The Welsh word hwyl (pl: hwyliau) has a staggering list of meanings, ranging from a sail, to a journey, to someone’s mood or temper. However, it’s also by far the most common way to say say goodbye. This is because hwyl is also the noun form of fun, and can convey a sense of enthusiasm …
Some emotions, like hapusrwydd (happiness) or cariad (love), we gladly welcome into our lives, while others, such as tristwch (sadness) or rhwystredigaeth (frustration), we tend to avoid or suppress, even though they, too, have important roles in helping us grow as individuals. One such unpleasant emotion is fear, known as ofn in Welsh. ofn fear …
As much as we might try to escape it, feeling sad is an unavoidable part of life. The Welsh word for sad is trist. trist sad Trist is a borrowing into Welsh from the Latin tristis, also meaning sad. It’s remained the same all the way from Old Welsh into modern Welsh. The Latin root …
Wales has over 2500 km of coastline, which is quite a lot for a very small country! Five of Wales’ seven cities sit on the coast, and even where I grew up in mid-Powys, one of the most inland parts of Wales, you were hardly ever more than an hour away from the seaside. The …
The Welsh word for young or youthful is ifanc. It can be used to describe people, animals, or plants. The plural form is ifainc. ifanc young Ifanc comes from the proto-Brythonic *jowank, meaning young. This root has another descendant in modern Welsh: ieuanc, which also means young or youthful. Both words are widely understood, but …
The word glas, meaning blue, turns up in a surprising number of Welsh phrases and expressions. This might not be expected, since Wales is usually associated with the colours green (gwyrdd) and red (coch). And we can’t exactly associate blue with Welsh skies, since they’re often more likely to be rainy (glawiog) and grey (llwyd)! …
If there’s one piece of clothing most of us seem to have in abundance, it’s probably the simple shirt – or crys as it’s called in Welsh. In fact, I recently gave away nearly twenty to our local charity shop! crys shirt According to Geiriadur Pryfysgol Cymru, it is possible that belt (gwregys) was the …
How do you celebrate Dydd Gŵyl Dewi (Saint David’s Day)? As a child, I often went into school dressed in traditional Welsh costume, and we’d have a special assembly to sing songs and talk about lessons from the life of Dewi Sant (Saint David). Of course, I don’t do that anymore, but it’s still nice …
As adults, and especially as parents, we find ourselves spending much of our time washing something—whether it’s laundry, dishes, or our children’s dirty hands. That’s why the Welsh word golchi (to wash) is one of the first we tend to learn and frequently use. In fact, the very first phrase I ever learned in Welsh …