If you speak or have ever studied French, you will surely have noticed the many lexical similarities it shares with Welsh. I can remember visiting Wales for the first time as an adult and being in disbelief at how much I could already pick out from the street signs, all thanks to my high school French.
Now, this isn’t because French had a direct influence on Welsh but because French descends primarily from Latin, which was the language of the Romans who conquered Britain in 43 AD.
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 some of the most popular ones now! 🙂
The Welsh word for congratulations is … a long one! 😉
I remember it took me ages to learn how to pronounce this word without getting my tongue tied, so don’t worry if it takes you a while for you to master it as well. Let’s break it down into small bite-sized syllables, shall we?
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:
Depending on where you live in Wales, there are different ways of saying “grandmother” in Welsh.
As you cross the border from England into Wales, you will be greeted by the expression “Welcome to Wales” or “Croeso i Gymru” on most signs.
Are you fed up with using the same old hackneyed expression “Iawn, diolch!” whenever someone asks how you are in Welsh?
To be fair, it is by far the most common response to << sut wyt ti >>, even when native Welsh speakers talk amongst themselves, but if, as a learner, you’d like to spice things up a bit, why not give one of the following ten expressions a try!
In standard Welsh, there are different ways of saying “home” depending on the context of the sentence.
The first word cartref, or cartrefi in its plural form, is the generic noun for “home” and is often used in the sense of ‘a home’.
The Welsh word for “blue” is glas or las in its mutated form following feminine nouns.
Dark blue is glas tywyll or dulas, whereas light blue is glas golau or goleulas.
Washed-up jellyfish on the beach are a very common sight in Wales, especially during the summer months. Despite their fearsome reputation, most species are actually quite harmless, inflicting just a mild sting. That said, there are a vicious few such as the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish that can do plenty of damage, even posthumously, so unless you know your jellyfish really well, it’s probably best to avoid touching them!