North Welsh and South Welsh, where is the border?

Welsh General / Questions
#21

Hi Ian.
To be honest there’s only one Welsh, but various dialects. None of them are the official one. So it’s a bit like the English dialects without the Chelsea one. Except that all are honoured slightly more than the English dialects. You only need one - I’d go for “Northern” if you visit Wrexham.

There is a literary (written) dialect which is used in varying degrees of formality in documents and older books. However, no-one actually speaks like that except when reading from the documents, so it’s enough just to know that it exists. :slight_smile:

#22

Hi Ian
I defer to @JohnYoung above! He seems to know what he is talking about :slight_smile:. I agree that Northern Welsh is spoken in Wrexham - it’s one of my nearest towns though I live just north of Y Bala in rural Sir Ddinbych. According to the Welsh tutor at our Sgwrs group in Dolgellau there are many different accents / dialects even in the Northern area. You can generally use many Northern or Southern words interchangeably - I know, because I have! Particularly llefrith or llaeth which is perfectly understood either way in TH Roberts’ siop coffi in Dolgellau (recommended by the way).
One thing that did puzzle me was that a Welsh native who has worked widely across Wales and in England looked at me strangely when I used ‘lan a lawr’ for ‘up and down’. She seemed to feel it should be ‘i fyny a lawr’ and at first didn’t seem to understand…
I love this beautiful language :crazy_face::joy::rofl: ond mae’n anodd iawn i ddysgu! :wink:

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