Bore da/question

Off the top of my head, all the Celtic languages, Finnish, Galician, the Chinese languages, Japanese and Latin. There’s probably a load more.

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What?! No we don’t.

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Really? I read it on the interwebs!

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Link? :wink:

I’ll have to search. As I said, the original list was ‘off the top of my head’.

Edited to add: I think this may be where I read it, but it’s not totally familiar, so maybe it’s been heavily edited since, or maybe I read it somewhere else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_and_no#Related_words_in_other_languages_and_translation_problems

When I learnt English at school (in the 1970’s) the teacher told us, that we mustn’t say just “Yes” or “No”, but we have to say “Yes, I am”, “No, it isn’t”., “Yes, I do” and so on. Maybe there are in many languages philologists or linguists or grammarians who say “In … you have to say it likes this”, but most people don’t care about it.

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I can’t seem to pronounce the word “milk”

North or South Markie?

Stu

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South.

I’m currently on lesson 5.

So is it the ‘ll’ sound that is tripping you, at the beginning of the word?

Try thinking of it as an L but with a little air coming out of the side of your mouth - when you crack it, you’ll know it because you’ll be able to keep it going for a fair old while. To get a feel for the difference, you might try alternating between saying ‘p’ and ‘ph’ in English… :sunny:

Shw mae @Markie e

You just keep saying the word as many times as you can or you are required to. One day you’ll just get the right thingy out. At least I did that.

I don’t know where are you from, but if you ever learnt some German then the sound at the end of word “ich” is quite similar.

O, yes, I know, at the beginning of the word it’s quite harder to produce this sound as in the middle or at the end. Gallu is the easiest word in Welsh for me. :slight_smile:

Pob lwc!

The Southern word is llaeth, so I would have said that the -th sounds like a soft “th” in English, as in the word “think”. Take Aran’s advice on saying the letter ll, plus I am sure that other advice on making this sound has been posted on the forum before.

For a video showing some letter sounds, try this one (found after a simple Google search and not something I have ever used, though). Ll is about 3 minutes in:

Hwyl,

Stu

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I meant the sound of ll is quite (not entirely though) similar to that at the end of word “ich” if you say it properly of course.

And this video is useful. I’m subscribing to this goy. Diolch @essenbee.

I’ve always described the “ll” sound to be like “ihs”, so "llaeth would sound more like “ihs-AAAFF”.
But either would be close enough…

EXACTLY!

German ich you don’t say just “ih” but you do slight hiss at the end (however not as much as with Welsh ll though).

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Is it the adjective hen that dictates a different word order, or dyn? What are some of the other exceptions I am likely to meet?

Thank you

It’s hen. It precedes the noun rather than follows as most adjectives do.

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“Hen” is the most familiar to me as it “behaves” as “star” (what means hen/old) in Slovene. …

Stu, I am confused, Yr hen ddyn, yes, but isn’t it ‘hen dyn’ for ‘an old man’? So ‘an old house’ would be hen ty, a small old house, ‘hen ty bach’ which unfortunately implies an old toilet!! I am henddraig because I’m female, but a man is definitely male!!

Dynes - > Y ddynes
Dyn - Y dyn

but…

Dynes -> Hen ddynes -> Yr hen ddynes
Dyn -> Hen ddyn -> Yr hen ddyn

In the second set, it’s ‘hen’ causing the softening, not the definite article… :sunny:

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