Making mistakes....... in English and Welsh

It was deliberate and a bit mischievous - I thought I’d see if anyone could figure them out. The road in Nottingham was Loughborough road and the place in Mid Wales was Builth Wells which I think is pretty much unpronouncable to many spanish speakers.- I expect Llanfair ym Muallt would be as well, but I suspect any attempt at the Welsh might be more intelligible than byw way. I had to ask a lot of questions about the area and where he stayed etc to get to the bottom of that one.

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I was taken back in time to a car in London in 1969, just before I moved to Yorkshire. I was going out with a lad from Caerffili and had a friend from east Yorks called Bill. I forget who was driving and despite new laws in 1966, none of us were sober. I asked if we were going to Bill’s. I daresay my diction was not perfect as the reaction was, “Oh yes! Let’s go to Bulth!” I kept trying to say what I meant, which of course, they all knew, but it became a standing joke to answer, “Builth!” if anyone asked, “Where shall we go?”

One of my most memorable mistakes (well I won’t forget it) was when I went on the bootcamp for the second time. We were walking around Newcastle Emlyn and I thought, ‘oh yes, I know what we have to do here’. (I think this was the same day as I left someone behind in Tresaith, and Dee had to go all the way back to fetch her - not my best day).

Anyway, I confused the two words gwiber (viper) and gwiwer (squirrel), which is quite important on the visit to Newcastle Emlyn, as bootcampers will know. So after I told @steve_2 about the ‘gwiwerod’, we had visions of rugby players holding the ball like a huge acorn. I don’t think that Steve will believe anything I say to him ever again.

Of course, that was not as bad as killing off @Iestyn’s childhood hero during Twenty Questions at my first bootcamp :grimacing:

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OK, curiosity here, who was your childhood hero?

My husband also applied an errant ‘s’ when talking to a friend (native Welsh speaker) about the ‘set’ we were going to do at an upcoming concert. He wanted to talk about the Welsh children’s song ‘Tren bach y Wyddfa’, but instead said ‘Tren bach y Swyddfa’, so he ended up recommending that we sing about the office train, rather than the Snowdon train! Our friend thought it was hilarious!

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