Welsh Word of the Day: Gogledd (North)

So much is made of the differences between the North and South of Cymru (Wales) that gogledd (north) and de (south) themselves are words that many learners become acquainted with early on in their Cymraeg (Welsh) journey.

Today, we’ll learn more about the word gogledd. It means both north in general as a noun and the adjectives northern and northerly. But in some contexts you can say gogleddol for the adjectival form, too.

It’s pronounced like this:

Or, colloquially, often like this in gogledd Cymru (north Wales) itself:

Here’s how to mutate gogledd:

But first, a brief note about de. You might know that de also means right, as in the direction (left is chwith, by the way). This comes from the fact that when facing to the dwyrain (east), the cardinal de (south) is on one’s de (right) side. I promise it doesn’t usually end up being as confusing in real life as it sounds on paper 😉

And actually, gogledd has pretty much the same story. The prefix go– appears in a lot of Welsh words, meaning next to or under. In gobennydd (pillow) for example, it’s combined with the word pen (head) to produce the meaning thing that goes under the head. And here it’s being combined with cledd, an old word which means the left hand or on the left side.

So if you stood on the traeth (beach) in Aberystwyth and faced inland, to the dwyrain, then de Cymru (south Wales) would be to your de and gogledd Cymru would be to your chwith.

The reason that these terms assume that one is facing dwyrain is that during yr Oesoedd Canol (the Middle Ages), mapiau (maps) had the dwyrain at the top.

The same etymological pattern appears in the other Celtic languages. For example, although a different word is used in modern Irish, Middle Irish had the word fochla, the second part of which comes from the same root as cledd. And the Cornish word for north, which is kledhbarth, includes kledh, which also means left.

We’ve covered gogledd, dwyrain, and de – the last of the four points on a cwmpawd (compass) is gorllewin (west). You might have noticed that they’re generally not capitalised, but they are when they appear in the name of a specific gwlad (country), like Gogledd Iwerddon (Northern Ireland) or Gogledd Corea (North Korea). On the face of the cwmpawd itself they are abbreviated to G, Dn, D, and Gn.

Just as in English, to express a point in between two of the cardinal directions, you hyphenate them. So, to walk north-west is cerdded tua’r gogledd-orllewin, or cerdded i’r gogledd-orllewin. You can see that gorllewin has soft-mutated, as the second part of a compound word usually does.

Tua means towards or about, here towards, and i has many meanings but here means to. I is also what we would use if describing one lleoliad (location) as being to the gogledd of a second.

Of course, when giving and receiving cyfarwyddiadau (directions) in the modern world, you’ll need a bit more vocabulary than just pwyntiau’r cwmpawd (the points of the compass).

Start the conversation by asking ble mae… ? (where is… ?) or sut mae mynd i… ? (how does one get to… ?) the place to which you’re going, and then here are some words and phrases that might be particularly useful:

• o flaen = in front of
• tu ôl i = behind
• wrth ochr = by the side of
• cyferbyn = opposite
• ymlaen = straight ahead
• yn bell = far
• yn agos = close
• yma = here
• yna = there
• yno = there (when the place is out of sight)

Gogledd appears in many frequently used proper nouns – regions of the world such as Gogledd Affrica (North Africa), Gogledd America (North America) or Pegwn y Gogledd (the North Pole), but also gwynt y gogledd (the North Wind), goleuni’r gogledd (the Northern Lights), and seren y gogledd (the North Star).

It is also itself sometimes used as a proper noun. This is different to yr Hen Ogledd (the Old North), which refers to the area of Prydain (Britain) comprising the gogledd of Lloegr (England) and the de of yr Alban (Scotland), an area which was considered one with Cymru, and the people of which were also called Cymry (meaning countrymen) – that’s where the name Cumbria comes from. Yr Hen Ogledd is the setting of many of the stories of the Mabinogi.

Just y Gogledd, on the other hand, refers to gogledd Cymru today, a region encompassing Ynys Môn (Anglesey), Conwy (Conwy), Sir Ddinbych (Denbighshire), Sir y Fflint (Flintshire), Gwynedd (Gwynedd), and Wrecsam. People from gogledd Cymru are sometimes called Gogs by people from de Cymru, who are in return called Hwntws.

It is known for its incredible natural beauty, in particular in Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri (Snowdonia National Park) and in Ynys Môn’s amazing traethau (beaches). It is also, particularly in the gogledd–orllewin, the part of the country with the most speakers of Cymraeg, which is certainly something for anyone hailing o’r Gogledd to be very proud of indeed.

Do you have a favourite memory of a place in gogledd Cymru, or a word or phrase you love from one of y Gogledd‘s many tafodieithoedd (dialects)?