Schools are one of the foundational building blocks of communities and societies. You could see them as ladders, on which children and young people progress in their learning and development step by step. It’s quite intuitive, then, that the Welsh word for school and ladder is the same: ysgol. Ysgol is a feminine singular noun, …
House in Welsh is tŷ, and the plural form is tai. There is a special plural form for referring to only two houses, which is teiau. tŷ house Tŷ comes from the proto-Celtic *tegesa, also meaning house or dwelling. It’s a homophone of the Welsh words ti (informal singular you) and tu, a noun meaning …
Compared to other kinds of exercise, I actually do quite a lot of running. Unfortunately, this is usually when I’m late to catch a bus! To run in Welsh is rhedeg. rhedeg to run Rhedeg has evolved from Middle Welsh redec, which itself is derived from the proto-Celtic *reteti. There are similar words in the …
Many people see snakes as a symbol of evil or danger, an image that traces its origin all the way back to the Bible, with the demon that tempted Eve often represented as a snake. In more modern popular culture, the snake is the chosen pet of Voldemort in the Harry Potter series. The Welsh …
The Welsh word for happy is very easy to learn if you’re a first language English speaker: it’s the very simple hapus. hapus happy Hapus merges the word hap (chance or luck) with the suffix –us, which is used in Welsh to indicate a characteristic. This is a loan translation of the English happy, using …
Are you tired of using the phrase tipyn bach ad nauseam? Then it’s time to add some flair to your Welsh with this adorable word for the smallest amount of something: mymryn. mymryn a little bit In English, mymryn can be translated in various ways – a little bit, a smidgen, an iota, a speck, …
It’s a well-known fact that British people eat a lot of boiled food – from potatoes, to meat, to vegetables like carrots and peas. Still, the most common use of boiling in the UK has surely got to be boiling the kettle to make a cup of tea. The Welsh word for the verb to …
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 …