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 …
Eisiau is a very important Welsh word, used in a wide range of situations. It can be most simply translated as want, but in reality, it covers a variety of meanings, from desire, to need or lack. Although eisiau is technically a noun, it functions as a verbnoun in everyday speech, so we can translate …
Rabbits are ubiquitous in popular culture, entertaining us for decades through the zany antics of Bugs Bunny, the endearing charm of Peter Rabbit, and the tardy, pompous nature of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. But what do the Welsh call this adorably fluffy creature, which ranks fourth as the most popular pet after …
Bread in Welsh is bara (plural: bara), and it’s as much of a staple in Wales as anywhere else. Plenty of classic Welsh dishes rely on bara – from bara brith, a dried fruit loaf flavoured with tea and spices, to caws pobi, the melted cheese-on-toast dish known across the border as Welsh rarebit, to …
The Welsh flag famously features a red dragon (draig goch), but you could argue that the green field it’s standing on is just as important. There are plenty of words for grass in Wales, which makes sense, because the country is well-known for being full of glaswelltiroedd (grassy pastures)and bryniau gwyrddlas gwelltog (grassy green hills). …