Frustrations and a personal short reflection

Three hours! Da iawn ti! :slight_smile:

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Please share with us the word for Ā“crematoriumĀ“, linking it with this anecdote should make it completely memorable. :slight_smile:

Now Ā“museumĀ“ I know when I see it, let me guess ā€¦
Amgueddfa ??? (checks book) Wow! I actually got that right, probably more by luck than anything else though.

And of course we can all allow ourselves that smug little smirk whenever we pass a pretty cottage named Ā“TÅ· BachĀ“ (or in Cornwall Ā“Chi ByghanĀ“).

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Amlosgfa

I was talking about the David Lloyd George Museumā€¦ Oooops

Oā€™n iā€™n coginio ar nwy!

Ah! IĀ“ll remember that now, a Ā“burning-up placeĀ“. So a museum must be a cuedd-up place. (Goes to dictionary) ā€¦ Papal indulgence ??? No, that canĀ“t be right. Amguedd = Ā“treasureĀ“ in the sense maybe of all those Ā“treasuresĀ“ you have no real use for but can never bear to throw away? The root seems to be the same cu(f) as in tadcu and mamgu, meaning something like Ā“belovedĀ“.
Well, sometimes the method works, Welsh is generally a lot more logical than English.

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Mind you, ā€œTy Bachā€ is a well enough known term so that people can play around with it knowingly- there is a small Thai restaurant in Swansea called the ā€œThai Bachā€, which I rather like! (There are enough different words for toilet in Welsh, including the very common ā€œtoiledā€ that this comes across as rather good, imho :blush:).

Along with things like the ā€œling-di-longā€ Chinese restaurant in Ammanford (meaningā€¦ Ermā€¦ Lackadaisical, or something similar) it is good to see people playing with bilingualism or trilingualism and knowing people will get the joke!

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Anglicised names can give rise to some odd notions, but at least may inspire a sense of humour :

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Indeed! Bilingualism is bilingualism- all the Welsh speakers I know play with two languages in the same way they play with one.

Nice detective work on the root - Cu (or Ky in Y gododdin - 13th Century) seems to have grown into many things maybe. I wonder if Cudd/Cuddio is linked - a place to hide your treasured things or the action of doing it? Also an old name for Museum is Cueddgell (similar etymology to Llyfrgell I guess) - same sort of thing as amgueddfa I suppose - a place for things that you hold with affection or are treasured (Cuedd - affection, also cuaidd similarly).

If my gu was still alive, I would have to ask her about cuedd.

Museums in the modern sense are pretty recent things- Swansea Museum claims to be Walesā€™ oldest museum, established in 1841.
The word ā€œAmgueddfaā€ was one of the neologisms coined by William Owen Pugh in his dictionary of 1793. It has become a ā€œrealā€ word through common usage though. He coined a fair few words, some of which entered the language, and others of which stayed in the pages of his books.
[ā€œCueddgellā€ is apparently first recorded in 1800. Iā€™ve never heard of the word, but that means little.]

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Ar hyn o bryd dw iā€™n eistedd yn Saith Seren. Ddudes i 'Ga i brechdan caws, brechdan ham, panad o goffi du a hanner o lemonade"ā€¦ Responseā€¦ ā€œthat will be 8 pound 70 pleaseā€. grrrrrrrr

Ond, maeā€™r dyn (neu dynnes) wedi dy ddeall di.
But the man (or woman) understood you.

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Wel yn wir. :slight_smile:

Not many but a few other words I found that are derived with cu - most of them now extinct/defunct. Mam-gu and Tad-gu are perhaps carrying forward remnants of a very old historic word/root.

Cunin - royal
Cufynog (Cu + mynog)- beloved and noble, gentle andcourteous.
Cun, cuniad - lord, chief, ruler.
Brawd y cu ā€“ Capuchin Friar
chwarae man gu (mam gu)lath (ddall): to play at blindmanā€™sbuff.
hen dad-cu, hen dad y cu: great-grandfather
mab (y) cu: beloved son; ?grandson.

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IĀ“m sure I had cuddio somewhere at the back of my mind when I posted. However I donĀ“t actually think this word is realted. OTOH, from the POV or learning/remembering vocabulary, false connections are as good as genuine ones.
cell IĀ“m sure must be from Latin, like English Ā“cellĀ“ meaning I suppose a chamber or room of some sort. Oddly, IĀ“ve never really thought to analyse llyfrgell which I feel like IĀ“ve always known somehow. IĀ“d imagine that as in English (?) it originally meant the room where the Master kept his books and only later got extended to mean a special building or institution.

Cell does mean cell, small room, small space. Lyfrgell is a book room. Oergell is a cold room, or a fridge. A rhewgell is an ice room, literally a freezer.

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FWIW, IĀ“ve seen native speakers chatting away in Welsh in a shop, but when it came to paying for the purchase, they switched to English to discuss the price. Maybe many Welsh speakers are more comfortable using English for counting and prices etc. ?

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Ah never thought of thatā€¦but hey i succeeded

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Certainly common to use English words for the numbers in such a situation.

Little disappointing the whole response was in English, in a Welsh language centre, used to dealing with such situations and geared up to encouraging the use of Welsh. Iā€™m a great believer in people using whatever language they feel like using, but most people coming in on their own would only have a short conversation with someone behind the counter, and it would be good to guarantee that being in Welsh - when this particular place is set up for that express purpose.

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And yes, you succeeded! :grinning:

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Actually i missed a bit out. She actually turned to me first and said so you dont want pickle in your cheese sandwichā€¦dim diolch i replied and then she said that will be eight pound seventy.

When she brought the food over she asked in english who was having what. I subsequently thanked her in welsh to which she said something like thats ok no problem.