A few months back there was a programme about poets who write in dialect across the Uk on R4, one of the contributors happened to be from Gower. During the course of their contribution I picked up a few words used in my household— for instance to ‘sget’? water meaning to splash or spray. My mother was once admonished by a relative for using a nonsense word, unfortunately she has no idea of it’s origin herself.
I did try to find out more about the Gower dialect without much success. I recall from the article that it supposedly originated from in sea going communities between Devon/Cornwall and Gower. That might make sense as my great grandmother was a Cornish immigrant to Swansea ( though she never considered herself to be in the least Welsh, nor did my late mother despite having a native Welsh-speaking father!)
If anyone has any information about the Gower dialect I’d be curious to see if I recognise any more familiar words.
I should add I grew up between Swansea and Ammanford where my father’s family were/are from, spent my childhood on the eisteddfodau circuits and cymanfa ganu courtesy of my piano teacher (one Mrs Boundy-Jones from Clydach) who only spoke Welsh during lessons regardless of whether her pupils understood or not! Somehow I managed to get through without ever learning to speak conversational Welsh.
