Today’s Welsh word of the day is nefoedd, which means heaven or heavens.
The singular-plural binary is a bit blurred here, because nefoedd is the word that is actually used most of the time in Welsh to talk about heaven, but it is formulated as a plural. Grammatically some people treat it this way – with the singular being nef (heaven) – and some people treat it as a singular noun, in which case it is feminine.
In general, when you are using adjectives to describe nefoedd, they should be soft-mutated, as you would do when describing a feminine noun. Don’t let the plural-sounding ending fool you.
To be in heaven in Welsh is yn y nefoedd. I mention this early because it’s different to what you might expect! If we literally translated this into English, we’d get in the heavens, which would sound like an unnatural way to say the phrase.
nefoedd
heavens
Nefoedd comes from the Old Welsh nem, which is probably also the ancestor of nen, another, slightly more literary way of saying heaven. The ultimate source of this word is the proto-Indo-European *nebhos (cloud), and it has cousins in many of the other Celtic languages, like the Cornish nev, the Irish Gaelic neamh, and the Breton neñv.
Interestingly, the word is also sometimes used to refer to the sky. We do this in English too, it’s just seen as a bit over-the-top and poetic, but it’s quite a relevant use case in Welsh because there isn’t just one word for sky in the language. The closest would be wybren, but this word isn’t particularly well-used, and it is more common (at least in my experience!) for people to say awyr (air) or, yes, nefoedd.
Of course we’re usually not just talking about the awyr when we use the word nefoedd. Its primary association is with crefydd (religion), and the bywyd tragwyddol (ever-lasting life) after marwolaeth (death) that many believe in, perhaps hoping to mynd i’r nefoedd (go to heaven) themselves.
Though perceptions of y nefoedd (the heavens, Heaven) vary between crefyddau (religions), common themes include its being a paradwys (paradise) where those who are rhinweddol (virtuous) in bywyd (life) will be rewarded with unity with Duw (God). Stereotypically, it can be portrayed as full of angylion (angels), cymylau (clouds), ceriwbiaid (cherubs), and canu’r delyn (harp playing). And if that last thing is true, y nefoedd must be full of Welsh people!
Nefoedd are also often understood in opposition to an uffern (hell) – and it is important to note, for those interested in traditional Welsh culture, that uffern is very different to the concept of Annwfn (the Underworld) in pre-Christian Welsh mythology.
Mae pawb eisiau mynd i’r nefoedd ond does neb eisiau marw.
Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Now there is a huge range of traditional Welsh ‘swears’, exclamations, and expressions which use the word nefoedd. I’ll give a list below, and I’m including their literal translations, because they don’t always correspond perfectly to phrases that are common in English. But to give you an understanding of how they’d be used, most of these are expressions of surprise and / or of strong feeling.
- nefoedd! = the heavens!
- nefoedd wen! / nefi wen! = white heavens!
- nefoedd fawr! = big heavens!
- nefoedd yr adar! = the birds’ heavens!
- diolch i’r nefoedd! = thanks to the heavens!
- bendith y nefoedd! = the heavens’ blessing!
- er mwyn y nefoedd! = for heavens’ sake!
As ever, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve heard or used an expression I haven’t listed here! I’ve listed a variety of examples from different sources, but personally those I’ve heard most often are nefi wen – by the way, nefi is just a colloquial alternative form of nefoedd – and nefoedd fawr.
Even those that I’m very familiar with, though, sound to my ear like they’d be used by older people! That’s the same in English though if you think about – most young people don’t use expressions like good heavens or thank heavens these days.
Nefoedd wen! Am ‘stafell fudr!
Good heavens! What a dirty room!
I’ll finish with a fun fact. Did you know that term iaith y nefoedd (language of the heavens) is a very common tongue-in-cheek way to refer to the Welsh language itself? Well, if we’ll all be speaking y Gymraeg (Welsh) in y nefoedd… better start practising now 😉
