i have always understood that there is North Wales and South Wales Welsh. At s recent meeting I was told I was wrong and that there are at least 5 different types of Welsh Can someone enlighten me?
Iâm no expert but Ihad some lessons from someone from Ceredigion and there were some expressions that seem unique to that area (eg âsaiân gybodâ instead of âdwiân ddim yn gybodâ - sorry if thatâs spelled wrong) I think itâs probably a continuum of regional variations from north to south with some oddities in between.
Anyone else know?
How you define âtypeâ? Dialect, I guess. How many of those in England? A lot more than 5! The film âKesâ caused a lot of hassle in 1969 because folk down south couldnât understand the language! (Yorkshire, Barnsley area!) modern communications have helped to teach folk all dialects if not too strong, but they are still around!
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Sa iân is taught in the SSiW lessons as a Southern form.
Sir Penfro, Pembrokeshire has some different pronunciations from Cwm Gwendraeth, the Gwendraeth Valley, which are in turn different from Caerffili. And they are all âsouthernâ versions. And there are local words for sweets, boys, girls. But none are so impenetrable as to be impossible to understand.
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Probably partly because we have much less mass media in Welsh, we still have a huge amount of variation - so youâll find that people are very aware even of Welsh that comes from a different village, let alone a different county.
So on the one hand, no, it doesnât make all that much sense to talk of northern or southern (although itâs a kind of short-hand that people often use) - itâs more almost village by village - but then the other important point is that nobody has any serious problems understanding people from other places (although theyâll often joke about it)⌠
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