A weekend of Welsh language and literature in Snowdonia - book now for 2019 events

Oh, that’s too bad. I would love to join you, but I won’t be in Wales until August and can stay only two or three weeks. I’ll miss both sessions then. :frowning:
Does anyone know if something similar takes place regardless where in Wales between 6 and 25 August?

Hi Sally! I know they want more people so I think you’ve definitely got a place if you want one! Looking forward to seeing you there! Thanks so much for your interest. Harriet

That’s a shame. Maybe next year! I think there are intensive Welsh language courses in Lampeter and Aberystwyth universities over the summer - although that’s very different to the course I’ll be doing as it will be to learn to speak Welsh rather than comparing Welsh with other languages and looking at Welsh literature…You could also go to the Eisteddfod if you’re in Wales in the first week of August? Have a lovely time in Wales anyway!

Thank you, I will definitely check out Lampeter and Aberystwyth. Of course I will surely visit the Eisteddfod, if I’m on time.

I’ve just booked to come to the course next month! My parents have cancelled their trip, so I’m able to come now :slight_smile:

Would you like to share transport? I am picking someone up who lives on the Isle of Wight and would be happy to detour via Llandysul…

That’s really kind of you, but I have to run a Hangout for the 6MWSers between 2pm and 4pm, so I’m planning on getting up to Machynlleth in time, where EE tells me I have reasonably good coverage for my Mobile WIFI device, and stopping there for a couple of hours to run the Hangout … hopefully outdoors somewhere as that’s the best signal, so the weather better be kind to me!

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I came home from this amazing event this afternoon and I have to say it was worth every penny!

Harriet is an enthusiastic and inspiring tutor, sharing her passion for diving behind the scenes with language as well as her fantastic harp-playing skills. We looked into how consonants tended to change in sound over the centuries, seeing how words that seem different in English and Welsh can sometimes be traced back to a common ancestor in the indo-european parent, but they’ve just undergone different changes through the years so ended up sounding quite different.

We looked at excerpts of Welsh literature going back to the 6th century and coming all the way through to the present day, with a very apt extract from ‘O Ran’ by Mererid Hopwood, our recent party guest speaker!

Last night Harriet showed us how the harp has developed from a rectangular instrument recorded in an ancient stone carving, and explained about the different types of harps played in Wales today. Then we retired to the bar and had a sing-song to Harriet’s harp playing, with one of the staff joining in and giving an example of Cerdd Dant, and one of the course participants giving a beautiful demonstration of plygain singing.

There was even time to do a little exploring of the woods behind Plas Tan y Bwlch before setting off for home.

It was wonderful, and great to see so many SSiWers there! Harriet will be running another course in September, and if you have any interest at all in how the Welsh language and literature has developed over the centuries, it’s really worth saving up to go.

http://www.eryri.llyw.cymru/study-centre/public-courses/course-details/history-and-archaeology/about-welsh4

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Yes, indeed, being one of the other SSiWers there I really couldn’t agree more!

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Reflecting one topic of Harriet’s course, an interesting map here (from Reddit.com via Maps On The Web) of the words used for father in languages ‘around the world’
https://t.co/PKGC5RXLbv
(although annoyingly Celtic languages, Basque etc, etc have been omitted)

I also would like to endorse everything that @Deborah-SSi has said: Harriet is a totally inspiring tutor, and the quality and quantity of what she managed to pack in less than two days was truly phenomenal! In addition, we came away with a large selection of handouts with many ideas for following up the topics covered in the tutorials.

I can recommend anyone interested in the history of Welsh language and literature to try and attend the September weekend course - and indeed, if Harriet should run a longer course sometime, some of us will be back!

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It’s a nice map. There are some similarities that it conceals, though, through its use of non-Roman alphabets – I can see why, but unless you can read both Devanagari and Arabic scripts you’re not going to see the resemblance of Hindi pitah and Persian pedar to Greek patéras and, with typical Germanic sound-shifts, English father. (The Persian for chwaer is khvahar, by the way – but the v is silent.)

Another thing that a word like ‘father’ tends to get us dragged into is that it’s a word that’s often going to have ‘nursery’ forms – ‘dad’/‘daddy’ alongside ‘father’ – and these are often even more subject than grown-up words to processes like reduplication (of part or all of the word), metathesis (bits of the word swapping places), analogical remodelling (e.g. to rhyme with other words, such as ‘mummy’), etc. My mother, as a little girl, used to say wopsies for wasps, odney-dodney for ‘snail’ (it’s in the dictionary as hodman-dodman), and dannies for ‘hands’ ('ands).

Also, it seems that there were at least three common Indo-European words for ‘father’, all of which turn up in Latin. There’s pater, that we’ve seen; there’s atta, which is also found in Gothic – diminutive Attila – and which, with a different diminutive suffix, underlies all the Slavonic forms based on otici; and then there’s tata, which is maybe just a nursery form of atta.

Between them, those three account for most of the European forms we can see on the map, and the missing Celtic ones, too. Irish et al go with the pan-Indo-European root pater, but with the Common Celtic loss of initial p- (the Orkneys ought really to be the Porkneys, seeing as they’re named after swine) it becomes athair. Welsh, Cornish and Breton all use something remarkably similar to the tata that’s also found in Latin and Sanskrit :slight_smile:

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Diolch yn fawr @RichardBuck - this is interesting stuff!:slight_smile: By any chance, as an interesting outlier amongst the languages of Europe, would you know the Basque word for ‘father’?

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Good grief! It’s so long since I’ve heard that - my nan used to call our hands “dannies” too, and I’d pretty much forgotten until now. Thanks for bringing back a lovely memory!

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Thanks so much for leaving this nice comment Alan. It was lovely having you on the course!

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Thanks so much for the nice comments, John! It was lovely having you on the course. :slight_smile:

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Diolch yn fawr iawn Dee. Roedd e’n hyfryd eich cael chi ar y cwrs. Diolch am yr adborth caredig!

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I wouldn’t have known, but I looked it up and I think it’s aita or aite, so not a million miles from atta, although presumably unrelated.
There’s also the (largely untestable) hypothesis that labial sounds are amongst the first sounds that babies make reliably (you could check that bit) and therefore words for mother tend to have m- sounds; and that dental sounds follow fairly soon after and therefore words for father tend to have dental sounds in them. Given the use of handwavy weasel words like ‘tend to’ and the untestability of the causal link I’d say that’s no better than a very broad generalisation, though :slight_smile:

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Diolch @RichardBuck - seeing this, a memory of some years ago has newly surfaced of the father in a Basque family being called aita/aite, pronounced as ‘I tah’ (i.e. like the first two syllables of ‘I Tarzan’) with the emphasis on the first syllable.[quote=“RichardBuck, post:38, topic:12442”]
There’s also the (largely untestable) hypothesis that labial sounds are amongst the first sounds that babies make reliably
[/quote]

Interesting! You can see the logic used there as the lips would be the first part of the vocal mechansim that babies would need to have control over in order for them to feed

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Sounds amazing! Is the September course going ahead?

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