I admit that a couple can be slightly vague/variable as in a couple of hours. To me it is less that a few.
I learned that, in times of yore, un, dau, tri, llawer was as far as most counting went and, often, with no mention of llawer as tri stood for many! So your two would be âa fewâ and three âa lotâ. In terms of loss in battle, 30 was a LOT!
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Sorry no pic, but a bilingual road sign I passed today in Carmarthenshire had the design for bends and the message:
AM FILLTIR/FOR MILES
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Oh dear! Am filltiroedd, isnât it?
[quote=âJohnYoung, post:23, topic:9914, full:trueâ]
Sorry no pic, but a bilingual road sign I passed today in Carmarthenshire had the design for bends and the message:
AM FILLTIR/FOR MILES[/quote]
Usually when the sign says that thereâs a number indicating how many milesâŚ
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Never in my life have I ever heard anyone say âlook youâ - wonder where that comes from.
One I think has to be a throw back to Welsh is âthere we are thenâ. Not that loads of people in England wouldnât say that, but the context that I hear it round where I am doesnât fit with how most people in England would say it i.e. completely out of context most times.
Funnily enough, I heard it several times during a radio play on Radio 4 Extra, only recently.
âHeadlong Hallâ by Thomas Love Peacock.
This was a repeat of a recording made in 1988 (with Sir Michael Hordern, no less, narrating).
Apart from the execrable âstage Welshâ (only occasional), it was funny and quite good.
Looking at Wikipedia, Peacock was born and died in England, but did apparently live in Wales for a period.
Canât say Iâve ever heard it in âreal lifeâ.
Thatâs what I thought, Sionned. Having said that, you would have noticed on your visit that they are pretty chilled out in those parts, so wouldnât be phased by how long it was likely to go on for.
No, seriously; I posted it as an example in relation to the earlier mention of how flexible a number âa coupleâ could be.
Very Swansea. Always said kindly and usually at the close of a transaction or conversation. It was the first thing I heard when I moved here.
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Since I live close to Swansea, you could be right. Quite often I know when I finish paying, more than likely someone is bound to say - thatâs it, right, there we are then, done.
Another one, not a Swansea one, I remember a kid getting really told off by a teacher for saying he âwen upâ the next village, which is how we would all say we had been anywhere - didnât matter where or its direction Funny thing is we lived on top of âanâ hill and almost everywhere was technically down from where we were, while in the next village I think they went down to our village, even though they were technically going up.
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When I was a student in England someone asked me to get him a couple of fags from the shop (sold singly, as they did for impoverished students back then) and I asked him how many he wanted. He repeated âa coupleâ again and I said something like âhow many - 2,3,4, how many do you wantâ. He had to explain to me that a couple meant two, like in a married couple etc - that sort of connection or logic really never occurred to me before that.
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I recall my Mam always went âupâ to London, irrespective of direction. But when I was in Yorkshire I am sure we siad, âdownâ to London!
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My terribly smart landlady always goes âup to townâ - town always being London of course. All other places are named with their rightful titles, and no one goes up to them, nor along. Everyone seems to go down to Devon though.
Where I grew up, you were always âgoin down townâ - town not being London ever, but the centre of Bath. Best said with a Bathonian Burr! 
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one word i just thought of, but didnât know how to spell it was cai. If youâre in the garden or allotment, youâd use one with a shovel to turn the ground over and get rid of stones.
Iâve been surfing to find the official word in English and gave up. Looked in the Welsh dictionary and the closest thing was Caib - for lots of things, like pickaxe, mattock and hoe. I think the thing Iâm thinking of is a hoe - never used that word. Long handle and flat end at an angle.
I think the word Iâve always used must have come from the Welsh and I never knew it or any idea of the proper word in English.
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A hoe is as you described. It seems derived from Old German for to hew, so an instrument for hewing, but I associate hewing with trees, not little weeds, which is what we remove with a hoe. In app hoe is rendered as torri - to cut!
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Could the word that youâre looking for be âriddleâ? From Old English âhriddelâ. Used with a spade or a shovel to sift out stones.
Weâd go âdown townâ, âdown (insert part of Cornwall)â but up to everywhere else including Newquay (Cornwall)
When I was at uni in Cardiff a lot of friends would ask âare your friends coming down to visit?â Which was weird because theyâd always be coming âupâ
(Iâm from Plymouth)
No - think its called a grub eye hoe.
This is what I have always called a cai (or kye) - everyone seemed to have them years ago, as common as a rake or a spade
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Yes it is. Other names are Azada (Spanish for hoe) and Chillington Hoe. I use one on the three and a half allotments that I have. One of which was a mass of old established blackberries when I took it on. The azada is the best tool ever for grubbing their roots out without much effort. Far better than a spade for that sort of job.
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What do you have against scrummy blackberries? I kneew an ex-kichen garden inYork that still had excellent raspberry canes! Oh, i know you would have been sure they were unproductive brambles, but some on Gower gave really, really good fruit!