Gair neu Idiom y Diwrnod - Word or Idiom of the Day

I was told by a trainee teacher that mae gen i wallt brown was correct and mae gwallt brown da fi was wrong. I didn’t get his explanation and haven’t followed his advice, but he may have been right.

Even so I would still have expected ma dau frawd da fi in South East Wales, whether it’s correct or not, just as you’ll hear things like shwd cymint for how much and plenty of other things that you probably wouldn’t be taught at school.

Just curious - for what would you use “cheesy” in a menu?

As an ingredient, it would be caws, right?

I can imagine when you talk to someone and describe something that tastes like cheese or a plate/recipe with cheese I guess you might use cheesy (in one of those three form).

But cheesy as part of a plate name in a menu sounds weird to me!

Further back than that, even. It’s reckoned that in Indo-European you could have -l- -n- and -r- functioning as vowels – like you see in Eastern European placenames like Plsen (where Pils comes from) and Brno. Most of the later languages have got rid of these, by adding a vowel before or after, but they’re usually different vowels in different language families.
So the Indo-European negative prefix is thought to have been just vocalic n-, which shows up in Germanic (including English) as un- as in ‘unlucky’; in Latin as in-, although Latin often assimilates the ‘n’ to the following sound, as in ‘invisible’, ‘impossible’, ‘illegal’; and in Welsh as an-, as in anlwcus, anweledig, amhosib, anghyfreithlon.
In Greek, like Welsh, the prefix is basically an-, but the ‘n’ disappears except before an ‘h’ or a vowel – so you get ‘a + systole’ but ‘an + aerobic’.

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Cheesy is used quite commonly used in descriptive ways.

Wy efo gwaelod cawsiog - Egg with a cheesy bottom - I saw on a menu

Pastai llysiau cawsiog - Cheesy vegetable pasty

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I can see that re- and Welsh ad- seem to match - there don’t seem to be all that many of these ones and when I find them, their not that commonly used, with a few exceptions. Maybe ail is playing a similar role and winning out in many cases.

adwaith, adwneud etc

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In English, m, n, r and l still are all capable of being syllabic (functioning as a vowel), e.g. ‘bottle’ phonetically (IPA) is [bɔ?ɫ̩], ‘button’ is [bʌtn̩] - depending on dialect of course.

Don’t mind me, just struggling with my last phonetics assignment :wink:

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You’re telling me you’ve never had cheesy potato? Tatws wedi stwnsio cawsiog. Just a guess :thinking:

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Cheesy chips!

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I think it’s mostly just a matter of thinking in Italian (and not remembering menus in English).
We don’t say “formaggiato” o “formaggioso”. We say “al formaggio” or an equivalent of “and cheese” or “with cheese”.
But the result can be the same when it’s time to eat it!

:open_mouth: I never had those!
I’ll have to fill this gap ASAP! :smiley:

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Word of the Day 04/10/2018

Today’s word was inspired by @gruntius

Gloyw = gloy-you
Gloywi = gloy-wee

Gloyw means bright / polished / shining / clear

Gloywi means to make bright / to polish or burnish / to make clear

Remember this?

The second part of tryloyw comes from the word gloyw and in this context means clear.

You can also use gloyw to describe the moon on a bright night. You can also use gloyw to describe a precious metal or a gemstone.

In the context of learning Welsh, you may come across the term gloywi iaith. Gloywi iaith is used to describe courses which focus on further improving language for fluent speakers, so in this context gloywi means to clarify. These courses are often offered to students at university level, who want to improve language skills in preparation for writing essays.

You can also get gloywi courses to improve driving skills.

The process of removing sediment from a liquid such as beer in order to clarify it, can also be described as gloywi as well as the process of thinning/clarifying a liquid when cooking.

Now here are two additional and rather interesting uses for the word gloywi.

It is also sometimes used to mean run away or scoot off. You may hear on Welsh TV or read in Welsh books someone say to another in common speech, gleua hi, which means go, get away / scoot / skedaddle .

Another use for gloywi common in north Wales and connected to cooking is gloywi tatws or gloywi moron or gloywi bresych. It basically means to drain the water from your vegetables after boiling. This water would then be set aside to make the gravy. So is someone asks you to gloywi’r tatws then you’ll know that you need to drain the potatoes.

Sound file -

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Yeah, I was going for Pils as being a more familiar reference – didn’t want to scare people with too much IPA (and couldn’t be bothered to find it on my computer…) I tell my students that the reason we don’t write as we speak is because I pronounce ‘should not have’ as ['ʃn̩nǝ] – as in “You ['ʃn̩nǝ] done it like that, you [ʃtǝ] done it like this” – and I don’t know how to spell it!

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By the way how would you ask for an IPA in a pub properly? I wouldn’t mind drinking one right now!

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Mae iaith yn mor diddorol.

Language is so interesting

Gai i IPA plis? Os gwelwch yn dda is formal version of plis but I doubt if you’d use it in a pub.

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“Os gwelwch yn dda”? All these things instead of “plis”? :open_mouth:
Welsh usually seems so concise…what happened?

However sounds fine for IPA, but “Gai i Pils plis” might sound a bit weird… :smiley:

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.

Gloyw - Cester … Gloucester :wink: ( the gloyw describes the shining flooded fields of the floodplain)… considering how English much of Gloucester is nowadays…might shock a few residents to know the town name is not English in origin at all!

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That’s very interesting, Brynie. Thanks for sharing.

It’s fascinating isn’t it! I lived in Sir Gaerloyw for about a year in the late '90s - beautiful place. :slight_smile:

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The English Caers that sound similar to me in Welsh are Gloucester, Leicester, and Carlisle. Also Caerleon but thats in Wales :grimacing:

(Who alerted me to the existence of this * fabulous * thread!! :wink: )

Catrin, this is SO helpful! I’m always trying to expand my vocabulary, but I am often hesitant to use I word I’ve only read because I’m not sure if I’ll pronounce it right! :flushed:

Thank you, thank you for doing this!! :hugs: :kissing_heart:

Ok, off to soundcloud for a while! :dancer: :wink:

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