Hello world. I have a question for the forum regarding the differences between the northern and southern Welsh dialects. Namely, I’d like to know what they are. A Welsh friend told me that South Welsh is more affected by English, but that’s about as far as I know. Some questions:
Is one more ‘proper’ than the other? If students attend Welsh university can they write in either dialect? Do the distinctions become less pronounced the more advanced one becomes in Welsh? Do the distinctions cause any light-hearted regional animosities? Lastly, and perhaps least importantly, where is the geographic boundary (which dialect belongs to, say, Aberystwyth?)?
Thanks for any help, and please forgive my ignorance!
To the best of my knowledge, northern versus southern is a bit of a simplification. Welsh is different in pretty much every part of Wales, same as English is different in pretty much every part of the UK (for instance, I live in Bury, and ten miles down the road to Bolton you’ll hear words that you won’t often hear in Bury, and vice versa). Most of the difference seems to be a question of pronunciation, with a couple of words and patterns different here and there. As you start talking about more complex stuff, the words start becoming more and more similar. Written Welsh is almost identical between the two, with the occasional word being different here and there, so it really doesn’t matter which you use for a degree.
Incidentally, I came across one person in Pembrokeshire who’d never heard the word eisiau to mean need; and had only ever heard it to mean want (similar to the northern course). So when I sent a text message saying “I don’t want to go to work, but I need to,” but in Welsh, she thought I’d said “I don’t want to go to work, but I want to”. So yeah, my advice would be to not worry about it, and just pick the one that’s closer to where you live/where you’re planning to visit, or if that doesn’t help, just do the one that you prefer the sound of. For Aberystwyth, this would probably be the Southern course, but you’ll hear Northern patterns.
If students attend Welsh university can they write in either dialect?
Yes, but they’ll be encouraged to use more and more formal written language, which varies less.
Do the distinctions become less pronounced the more advanced one becomes in Welsh?
Depends a bit what you mean - a more advanced speaker will have access to a wider range of differences, and will use a wider range of local variations, and also be able to understand a wider range - so it stops being a problem of any kind.
Do the distinctions cause any light-hearted regional animosities?
Not at all. Everyone accepts that northern Welsh is the language of the Bible and just generally lovelier…
Lastly, and perhaps least importantly, where is the geographic boundary (which dialect belongs to, say, Aberystwyth?)?
The boundaries are many and varied - between village and village, or person and person… As far as our content goes, you’ll be fine in Aberystwyth with whichever way you go, and when you get there, you’ll adapt naturally to whatever you hear most often.
It does appear, as (can’t say learner after the last bootcamp) an improver, that a lot of native Welsh speakers in the south think that the Northern variety is more ‘proper’.
Others feel uncomfortable speaking with me bcause they think I speak ‘book Welsh.’
And I find that a lot of books translated into Welsh seem to end up with a North Walian version of the language.
Margaretnock said: “It does appear, as (can’t say learner after the last bootcamp) an improver, that a lot of native Welsh speakers in the south think that the Northern variety is more ‘proper’.”
Maybe. But I would say a lot more don’t!
As for translations, again, maybe. If that is true, I’m not sure why. Books written originally in Welsh seem to be written, where dialect is appropriate and detectable, in dialects spread throughout Wales - South and North as it were.
Maybe it’s just the market being cornered by certain translators? I don’t know.
Mind you, I know the main characters in the Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke books seem to be skewed towards speaking Southern dialects! [edit- though there’s a good mix of dialects spoken throughout the books, excellent for someone trying to improve their Welsh (in my view)!]
There was a brilliant series on S4C a couple of years ago called ‘Ar Lafar’, all about the language - its history and a lot of the variations and peculiarities around the country. One of the programmes was all about this ‘border’ between north and south. The presenter took a number of differences in vocabulary between the two (such as llaeth or llefrith for milk) and asked people in lots of different places which they used. He then got a load of schoolchildren to mark these on maps (different map for each pair of words) with coloured pins to show how the usage varied. It was fascinating stuff!
The conclusion? There is no one border - usage varies gradually as you move up and down (and sometimes) across the country.
Another programme was about the differences between town and country language around Bala; one was about vocabulary that was specific to different generations (such as the particular words for coins in Caernafon); one was about the ‘u’ sound that’s heard in the north-west, but also in a couple of little pockets in mid-Wales and the south; and so on. And it was all based on interviews with all sorts of different Welsh speakers from all over the country.
Why would anyone even do that? Family Guy is so culturally North American that you’d lose most of it in the translation, wouldn’t you?
I was joking :-))) of course. Peter Griffin’s accent is extremely, er, “different”. A highly exaggerated Rhode Island accent I believe. The other characters also have it - Stewie and Brian being obvious exceptions-, but to a lesser extent.
I think the slightly serious point that may have lain in the back of my mind was that when “cultural translations” are attempted, they often try to reproduce distinctive accents/dialects in one language with a distinctive accent or dialect in the translated or dubbed language. So, for example, I think I’ve heard what would have been Bavarian in an original German story rendered as, say, Yorkshire, or West Country, to distinguish it from more mainstream English.
Since Peter Griffin’s accent is so clearly not General American, I just vaguely wondered what variation of Welsh accent might be chosen to represent it.
I agree that it’s highly unlikely ever to happen.
**@Sara Peacock:** Sounds like a very interesting series. would be great if they would repeat it.
Yes, I knew that, it was just a situation that really didn’t compute - some things don’t translate just by changing the words.
Do you remember an old C4 show called Eurotrash? It was a tongue in cheek look at extraordinary ordinary people across Europe. They used heavy regional British accents to translate what the people on the show were saying, mainly, I think out of respect for the ordinariness of the characters. But in all honesty, it ended up sounding like they were taking the p*ss.
There are some pronunciation conventions in Welsh strict-metre verse (cynghanedd) that have a northern bias.
The one I’m thinking of in particular adopts the northern ‘u’ that Sara mentions above: u is allowed to rhyme with a ‘clear/light y’ (as in byr or brys) but not with i. That means you’re not allowed to rhyme torri and gyrru, even though I pronounce the end of those exactly the same.
Can you do that if you’re writing in true dialect? Yes, but the anonymous teacher in the @cynganeddu Twitter course pointed out when I tried weakly to defend myself (‘but I’m writing the way I speak!’) that Dic Jones, the great poet/farmer from Ceredigion, wrote verse in dialect but used ‘Cymraeg safonol’ (standard Welsh, i.e., not rhyming u & i) in his greatest works. Clear impication: man up & master using the rules before you dare to break 'em.
To go back tp the question of “proper”, there is a literary Welsh as well as a spoken Welsh, and literary Welsh is heavily based on the William Morgan bible. WM was a northerner, and tended to use northerm constructions, which means that modern “standard” Welsh is biased northwards.
As for “affected by English” etc, I was often told this by a nrthener who used words like “gwitsio” and “gwatsio” (heavily disguised “wait” and “watch”/) who had no idea that they were English words.
You will find a lot of Welsh speakers who have no clue as to whether the Welsh they speak is “real” Welsh or “Anglicised” Welsh or any other kind of Welsh, but will swear blind that your Welsh is “better” than theirs. Most Welsh speakers have as much idea of what Welsh is Welsh and what Welsh is Enlgish borrowings (or latin borrowings!) as your average English speaker has of what English is Saxon and what is French / Indian / Native Aerican / Italian etc. The point is that all these different Welshes (if that is the plural!) are spoken normally, and therefore perfectly acceptable spoken Welsh.
The moral of the story: always tell a Welsh speaker that you’ve really enjoyed speaking with them and that their Welsh is beautiful. There’s a good chance that they are concerned that you have learnt “correct” Welsh, and that their Welsh is somehow wrong. Re assure them, and they will be far happoer top talk to you again! It is often only learners who have the confidence in their welsh to tell you that yours is wrong!
Back in the 80s my mother worked as a speech and language therapist in Dyfed (as it was then!) She had a client who was an adult man with Downs Syndrome. He was telling her that he found it really hard when he had to speak English with people, as Welsh was his mother tongue. She pointed out that the people working at his day centre spoke Welsh and he could speak with them. He told her ‘But it’s not proper Welsh!’ And that’s just the difference between the farm where he was brought up and the local market town…
