Does anybody here speak Welsh?

Guest   Thu Sep 28, 2006 11:22 pm GMT
I'm considering learning it at a basic level, just for the heck of it.
João   Wed Oct 04, 2006 2:50 pm GMT
Lol i guess not, no1 speaks welsh...
Adam   Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:15 pm GMT
I got from Britain - the home of Welsh - but I don't speak it.

If you want to learn it, here's a warning - it's quite difficult.
Adam   Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:16 pm GMT
That should be "I come from Britain"
LAA   Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:44 pm GMT
It's not a very useful language to learn, I would suppose. But I do want to learn a Celtic language for some reason.
Adam   Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:00 pm GMT
Some Welsh grammar.

Welsh is spoken 611,000 people in Wales (around a quarter of the Welsh population) and by around 133,000 people in England in the countries enar the Welsh border. The people who speak it in England are mostly Englishmen and not Welshmen because, despite its name, Welsh isn't just a language native to Wales but is also native to England as it was spoken there before the Anglo-Saxons arrived and pushed those Celts out of what is now England and into what is now Wales.

Many signs and roadsigns in some English counties near Wales - such as Herefordshire and Shropshire - are written in both English and Welsh. Welsh is the oldest living language in Europe. It has grammatical gender - masculine and feminine - although, unlike French, German etc, the definite article does NOT change according to what gender the noun is. It has no indefinite article.

The definite article is r for words (masculine or feminine) beginning with a consonant -


e.g
Y ferch - the girl



It is yr for words (masculine or feminine) beginning with a vowel -

Yr ardd - The garden


However, if a word appears before the definite article and that word ends in a vowel then the definite article is 'r (apostrophe r) and is placed onto the end of that word -

"Mae'r ci allan y ty."
("The dog is inside the house."



yr Affrig - Africa
yr Alban - Scotland
yr Eidal - Italy
y Swistir - Switzerland





One thing that makes the Welsh language so difficult to learn is the thing known as "soft mutation". That means that FEMININE nouns change their spelling according to how they are used in the sentence. In some circumstances (don't ask me to exlplain which ones) masculine nouns can also be mutated.

Here are some examples -

Stone - Careg
The stone - Y gareg
My stone - Fy nghareg

The original word - "careg" - before mutation is known as a "radical." And the rules are different depending on what letter the world begings with. So the above rule is only for words beginning with C! Usually, feminine words beginning with C change it to G when you put the definite article in front of it, but if it begins with another letter then a different rule applies.

Here's another example -

Cat - Cath
The cat - Y gath
My cat - Fy nghath
etc
etc

So c become as g with the definite article in front of it and become ngh with "my" in front of it.


P becomes b -

Port - Porth
The port - Y borth
My port - (I don't know that one)
----------


G disappears -

Garden - Gardd
The garden - Yr ardd
------------


B becomes F -

Morning - Bore
The morning - Y fore
------------


D becomes DD

Meadow - dol
The meadow - Y ddol
------------

M becomes F -

Girl - Merch
The Girld - Y ferch


Welsh can also seem daunting at first and appears unpronounceable. That's because it seems that som many Welsh words have no vowels in them. "Cwm" means "valley." So people that "I can't pronounce that! There is no vowel!" But it's easy once you learn that "w" is a vowel in Welsh and it pronounced like the English "oo". So "cwm" is pronounced "coom".




Sample text in Welsh (Testun enghraifft yn y Gymraeg)

Genir pawb yn rhydd ac yn gydradd â'i gilydd mewn urddas a hawliau. Fe'u cynysgaeddir â rheswm a chydwybod, a dylai pawb ymddwyn y naill at y llall mewn ysbryd cymodlon.


All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
**************
Adam   Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:02 pm GMT
That should be -


The definite article is y for words (masculine or feminine) beginning with a consonant -


e.g
Y ferch - the girl
LAA   Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:50 pm GMT
I've only heard Welsh spoken on the internet. Does it have nasal sounds and an uvular 'r'? I'm just curious.
Adam   Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:58 pm GMT
The "ng" is a nasal sound, produced at the back of the palate.

Stone - Carreg (should have two Rs not one as I wrote above)

The stone - Y garreg

My stone - Fy ngharreg - My stone (the "ngh" is a nasal sound)

Her stone - Ei charreg


Welsh sounds - http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/fun/welsh/Lesson01_main.html
Aquatar   Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:53 am GMT
So how many forms can a Welsh noun take then?
Adam   Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:01 pm GMT
I don't know. I don't speak Welsh. But it is much more difficult that German and French and other European languages, which don't change the spelling depending on whether you put "the" or "her" or "my" or whatever you out in front of it.

But remember that these mutations normally only happen to feminine nouns and not to masculine nouns.

More grammar

Among the six thousand or so languages of the world the Welsh language is of an unusual type. Almost ninety percent of the languages of the world have sentence structures that are either Subject-Verb-Object like English or Subject-Object-Verb like Japanese. Welsh is one of the about NINE percent which have the structure Verb-Subject-Object.



The Present Participle of Verbs

The present participle of a verb in Welsh is formed by preceding it with the word "yn." For example, the word for "to play" is "chwarae" so "playing" is "yn chwarae".

The present tense in Welsh can be formed by adding the present particple of the verb to the appropriate form of "bod" (to be). For examples:

she is working: y mae hi yn gweithio
he is playing: y mae ef yn chwarae


Articles

There is no indefinite article (a and an in English) in Welsh. The definite articles (corresponding to the in English) are y, yr and 'r. The rules for their use are:

y is used before consonants

yr is used before vowels and h

'r is used after vowels

When the definite articles (y, yr, 'r) before a singular feminine noun the initial sound in the noun is changed in a systematic way called mutation.

This is described below. Mutation does not occur for masculine nouns or for plural feminine nouns. All nouns are either masculine or feminine.


Mutation of the Initial Sound

of Singular Feminine Nouns Induced by the Definite Article
Initial.......Letter Mutation
B............. F
D............ DD
G .............__
P............... B
T ..............D
C ...............G
M ..................F


The Formation of Plurals

In Welsh nouns and some adjectives may have plural forms. The plural form may be generated by several different different methods, but the most common is the first one listed below:

Addition of Endings

_au _iau _ion _ydd _i _od

The most common endings for plural nouns are _au and _iau. For plural adjectives the most common ending for those that have such endings is _ion.
Guest   Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:21 pm GMT
Adam

"Welsh is the oldest living language in Europe."

Where does this come from?

older than Basque, Greek and Albanian??
Guest   Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:33 pm GMT
Adam

I believe you have said in other posts that English is the hardest European language to learn. Do you believe it's harder than Welsh?
LAA   Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:32 pm GMT
How is English the hardest language in Europe to learn? I honestly don't see how people can say that. Is it because the vocabulary is a mix of Germanic and Latin, so that both Germanic and Romance speakers have trouble mastering all of the vocabulary, perhaps?
Adam   Thu Oct 19, 2006 6:41 pm GMT
English is the hardest language in Europe to elrn to read. Italian and Finnish are the easiest.