Long-term vs short-term memory--whatever works!

Welsh
#21

'Dw’in ei garu fe Charlotte (I hope that means ‘I love it’–adapting what I learned in Course 2 Gwers 5)

I must try to find the Baled, so thank you for that excerpt, and yes, it could understand it from Level 1 too. Hey, that’s proof is of progress folks.

As for the dirty socks analogy, hee hee, yes that too rings a bell. I know that if I need to remember something for the morning, but have already gone to bed, I repeat it 3 times before trying to sleep–letting it soak in. It works for me.

DIOLCH yn fawr iawn,
Marilyn

#22

You are right noticing how somethings seem to open magical doors into our memories, while other doors seem stuck shut. But given enough time maybe even the strongest hinges or locks rust through enough to make it easier to push those doors open without any effort.

When I was visiting my brother in St. Nicholas, on the Vale of Glamorgan, we saw some marvellous old doors to disused stables and gates to nowhere that stood ajar–they were like what I imagine the doors to our long-term memories are like–and quite lovely to photograph too.

I am about to hunt down the magical spell-check setting, but I only want it for SSiW–I need all the help I can get for WSiE, if you know what I mean? :confused:

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#23

Here is link to full version http://www.ybont.org/pluginfile.php/35681/mod_resource/content/1/Cerdd%20y%20dysgwr%20dryslyd.pdf

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#24

You are an absolute wizard Sandra–DIOLCH yn fawr iawn.

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#25

Drum roll please… Thanks to your prompting friends, I have managed to do even better than adjust my spell-check setting–Welsh is now added to English in the automatic dictionaries. I just gave it a whirl… Works a treat! I can now WSiW and WSiE.

Hey Tatjana, look at this… We are away to the races again…
:racehorse:

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#26

Mae whant Bootcamp arna’i… Pam?

I want to have fun tackling some of those words I mix up or are a bit elusive, so immerse myself in the language.

It’s a bit hard from Vancouver… Besides, it is that silly season of trying to cram in the last of the summer with that frantic ‘back to school’ feeling (more specifically back to all the activities that kick off soon).

No worries. I have just scheduled a day (start small) that I am going to dedictate to Welsh. In the meantime, as I carry on with Course 2 I am taking notes of the lessons, or rather parts of lessons I might want/need to go over, will pick some of the listening/speaking practices, and hopefully organize a Skype session too. To make sure this is really enjoyable I plan to cook some of my favourite Welsh food (ahead of time), look out some choral music and folk songs, put aside a bottle of gwin, then get stuck in. Where? Our tiny, cosy sunroom just off the kitchen where I sit to do my lessons–my pretend cottage…

image.jpeg3216×2416 2.37 MB

And the date? 15th September–it is on the calendar.

PS. Calling all Bootcamp veterans and other DYI Boot-campers–any other suggestions for making this feel authentic? Cwrw? Does gwin count?

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#27

Great idea - good luck! :slight_smile:

#28

I see you’re in Vancouver. I’m nearby! (New Westminster)

I had hoped that the Vancouver Public Library’s excellent multilingual selection might have some Welsh stuff, but it looks like their Welsh materials are very sparse.

#29

Hi Estel,

Good to meet you here neighbour!

As far as local Welsh resources, your best bet is at the Vancouver Welsh Society which has its own library as well as the ‘natural resource’ of native Welsh speakers (North and South), plus lessons available–maybe you know all this and are already a member. If not, try visiting their website–it is exciting to have this on our doorstep

Like you, I have had little or no joy finding much through Vancouver’s public library system or even the universities here. However, through recommendations on this Forum and through a great Skyping friend/mentor who has also pointed me in the right direction, I am gradually building my own reference collection. There are also some excellent resources online, and if you search this Forum, you would be amazed what you can find–probably the answers to anything you might need.

Having done my own hunting around, I don’t think you can beat SSiW for its ability to get you speaking Welsh, growing in confidence and the endless kindness and encouragement available through this Forum. In the past I have shelled out a small fortune for various home-study courses (and may still have some vinyl records from the BBC that would be collectors’ items now), but nothing ever worked for me. Then I joined the Welsh Society this time last year, and learned about SSiW at one of the language classes. Since then I have been ‘away to the races’ :racehorse:

I am busy enjoying the last gasp of summer, but if you like, let’s set up a time to have a nice chat after Labour Day, and maybe SSiW over a :coffee:️ or :wine_glass:

Best wishes,
Marilyn

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#30

Thanks, Marilyn!

No, I wasn’t aware of the Vancouver Welsh Society - I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the suggestion.

I’m pretty new to studying Welsh (but am sort of a long-time collector of languages). I had heard about Duolingo from some friends and wanted to try it out, and picked Welsh as my language to experiment with. As I was nearing the end of the Duolingo course, I was interested in finding more resources to continue my Welsh study further. Several people had mentioned SSiW on the forums at Duolingo, and I figured it’d make a good complement to Duolingo, since Duolingo is better at written than spoken language and better at recognition than production, and SSiW is focused in exactly the opposite direction.

I would be interested in meeting up some time after Labour Day :slight_smile:
Hoffen i siarad Cymraeg gyda ti :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Estel

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#31

Hi again Estel,

You collect languages… Wow, I envy you–until SSiW I often struggled with languages except for Maths.

Maybe it was being force-fed French at highschool that turned me off. It was the difference between:

Mae ('n) rhaid i fi,
Mae isie i fi, a
Mae whant arna’i.

I had to do French so developed a mental block, but did OK at Latin, perhaps because that was my choice (and it seemed logical like Maths). Later, I had to study classical Greek and Hebrew which were intimidating so I thought ‘here we go again’. However, more recently, either for work or vacation, I actually managed to learn enough Spanish to hold a rudimentary business conversation and more than enough German to order a coffee, beer or wine, then find a WC (in that order), but learning Welsh–that is a different matter entirely.

My motivation, and various attempts to siarad Cymraeg have been connected with a sense of identity. Having been born and grown up in Wales, even though we are now Canadian citizens and love Canada, being Welsh is a part of me that seems to grow as the years go by.

When I read Aran’s journey towards becoming a Welsh speaker (in the FAQ section) I could relate. And you?

All the best,
Marilyn

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#32

I was interested in different languages already as a child, although I didn’t learn a substantial amount of any foreign language before university.

I was home educated, and so I didn’t have to learn French in school; perhaps that’s part of why my interest in languages didn’t get squashed. (It has the odd result, though, that despite being a Canadian who loves languages, my knowledge of French is more or less limited to cereal-box French.)

I studied a bunch of languages in undergrad and grad school, but most of them were pre-modern languages (my greatest language love, Old English; Ancient Greek; Sanskrit; Biblical Hebrew, and others), so my study was focused on grammar and learning to read with the help of a dictionary, not on speaking. (I’ve also forgotten a lot of most of them.) The only foreign language that I have any real speaking competency in is German - and perhaps Dutch, which I’ve sort of absorbed in a hard-to-describe way without really studying it, though even there, my reading and writing is much better than my speaking and listening. (I might try the SaySomethingIn Dutch course at some point, but I think I’d burn out if I tried to do two SaySomethingIn languages at once, so it’ll have to wait until I think I’ve focused on SSiW long enough).

I have no real personal connection to Welsh identity, but the Celtic languages do appeal to me more than most, for indefinable reasons. I fortuitously acquired a Welsh Bible several years ago, but I never really expected to learn enough Welsh to actually be able to read it. But when I started doing Welsh on Duolingo, it caught on stronger than I expected and I’m really liking Welsh - it’s up there among the languages I’m particularly fond of.

All the best,
Estel

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#33

Shmae, Estel a chroeso! You do not need any connections at all to learn and to chat on here! Our ever helpful tech wizz and virtually fluent siaradwr @tatjana is a Slovene from Slovenia who got interested because she became a rugby union fan!
Me, I’m an ancient tetchy long-time Nationalist living in Yr Alban and here to help with my hiraeth (and improve my forgotten and never very good Cymraeg)!
I was told once that Vancouver is the most beautiful city in the world. The person who said this, did add, “that I’ve seen”, but as she and her husband had been to an awful lot of cities, it was still a pretty good advert! Having seen pictures, I can see it is very beautifully situated!

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#34

C´mon, if you managed classical Greek then Cymraeg will be a walk in the park :slight_smile: Hebrew is totally unrelated to Welsh but happens to have a few similarities; word order, mutations, combined prepositions … (so use anything familiar that helps!)

You wrote :
Mae ('n) rhaid i fi : this means ´I must, I have to´ and you soften the verb, just remember as a pattern and useful phrase ¨Rhaid i fi Fynd¨ ´I gotta go´ :slight_smile:

Mae isie i fi : AFAIK this is wrong, you say ¨Dwi isie mynd¨ ´I want to go´.

Mae whant arna’i : hwant or in the N. chwant means ´desire´, so your example literally means ¨There is desire upon me (to go)¨. Probably just a slightly stronger version of the last one. Others here will have to explain how it´s used in practice, which dialects etc. but my guess would be something like ¨I´d really like to go¨ etc.

#35

Not necessarily wrong, depending on what you are trying to say. In the Southern course, we learn Mae isie i fi fynd as I need to go. As I understand it, generally it’s isio for want in the North (and angen for need) and isie for need (and moyn for want) in the South. Generally. With exceptions. Because there isn’t really a neat N/S division. Not trying to cause any trouble here :slight_smile:

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#36

I confess, I´ve always gravitated more towards Northern usage. So anyway, I found this note in Cymaeg, Cymrâg, Cymrêg … Cyflwyno´r Tafodieithoedd, p.90:

¨_ma ´na i isho_ : Ffurf lafar ar y mae arnaf eisiau , cystrawen sydd yn ildio mewn llawer man — o dan bwysau´r Saesneg, y mae´n degyg — i dwy isho.

This is a note to a transcript of a recording made in Ynys Môn!

Which means that the form I know is probably influenced by English, but then again the ´proper´ form suggested isn´t quite yours either, but close. Lit. ¨need is upon me¨ where you have ¨need is to/for me¨. Use of i often implies owning or belonging in a stronger or more permanent sense than ar.

Gareth King´s Modern Welsh Dictionary gives only variations of dwi isio in different tenses etc. (p.85)

T.J. Rhys Jones’ Teach Yourself Living Welsh (i.e. Cymraeg Byw) gives an extended (semi-literary?) form of the above Rydw i eisiau … (p43-4)

Dan L. James Cwrs Cymraeg Llafar : No blydi index :rage: , no idea what they use!

Going back to the days when (more or less) Literary Welsh was taught to beginners, the old Teach Yourself Welsh from 1960/65 has (p.115):
¨_Ar_ and its peraonal forms arnaf i, etc. can be used with eisiau (need) and the verb bod, to be, to express want, e.g.: Y mae eisiau bwyd ar y bachgen … ´The boy wants food´.¨ (+ similar e.g.s)

So essentially the older form with ar, but no mention of forms with i.

Morris Jones´ Welsh Grammar has nothing useful to say, but if you want to look go to p.414.

Wel, dyna´r cyfan dwi´n gallu dŵad o hyd atyn nhw yn fy llyfrau i. Someone else can look online if they like :slight_smile:

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#37

Thanks for sharing your research! Although I’m afraid some of that is a bit beyond me at the moment :slight_smile:

I think that seeing how language changes with geography and with time is really interesting.

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#38

Phew… Did I start this? Good–because I have learned a lot from the exchange–so thank you to Anna for summarizing the S. Walian usage (which I am learning), but also to Howl’ for the research and explanations.

A ‘walk in the park’ you say, and I know what you mean, but am more likely to trot out: a ‘piece of cake’. So what do Welsh-speakers say, meaning ‘easy peasy’? And no, it isn’t ‘all Greek to me’–not any more, thanks to SSiW :wink:

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#39

Panic.,… Aran, where is it please? Or should I ask Iestyn?

My memory may play tricks sometimes, but I definitely remember a most important lesson for rugby (soccer, ice-hockey…) fans with such useful words as the Welsh for ‘rubbish’! Pity I cannot remember them–I would hate to make a mistake over something so crucial :confused:

It may not be World Cup time, but it is September,… How is a person to express themselves adequately when the ‘game’ is on, or for that matter, before, during, and afterwards?

Go on, now tell me I just have not visited the whole site. A clue would be fine… I’ll go figure it out with an itsy bitsy hint.

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#40

Good to see someone enjoying reading books about the Welsh language (as I do!), but important to stress here that “eisiau i fi” is perfectly fine and used.

Just because forms do not appear in certain books that someone possesses, does not mean that they do not exist and are not used (locally, dialectically, or in “high grammar”). Any more than because some words don’t appear in a particular dictionary they are not “the right Welsh word”, concerning any style of Welsh.

There are very few grammar books and dictionaries which give you the whole picture, whether considering “dialect” or “literary” grammar.

“Mae eisiau i fi” is fine.Certainly not wrong.

One quote you use describes it as “ffurf lafar”, but this does not imply improper. It is fine. My reaction to that is that is it backs up the use of “eisiau i”, rather than being “close, but not quite”.

My family in Carmarthenshire would certainly use " chwant bwyd arana’i" for being hungry rather than starving. The use of “chwant” in that case does not, as far as I can see, imply something stronger than it would were they to use eisiau in that case.

This is a really complex issue, but also very simple and easy to get through.

“eisiau” is a word which covers both “want” and “need”. Other words in various areas cover want/need in their own way. There are several ways, all equally valid of ‘grammatically’ using the word eisiau in a sentence.
How someone uses it, whether the way they use it determines the meaning or not, what other words they use alongside it, differ from individual and individual. This involves differing from area to area and situation to situation.

This may sound offputting, but it simply means if you use any one confidently, you will be understood, as the context will make it clear what you mean!

It is good to see someone enjoying looking in books about the Welsh language (as I do, tremendously!), but when you say

though I found both books and Welsh online to be fascinating, useful resources, I only really understood what they were saying (what exactly they were referring to, what type of language, and, quite frankly, whether they were right or not!) when I started having conversations with native Welsh speakers.

I only mention this because you say “eisiau i fi” is wrong. I know you say “as far as you know”, but I wouldn’t want anyone reading this thread to come away with the impression that “eisiau i fi” is wrong. :slight_smile:

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