How does one say “Speaker” in Welsh, in the sense of “Welsh speaker”? This is as opposed to “Dw i’n siarad Cymraeg” (“I am speaking Welsh”). Is there a regular way of transforming such a verb into a noun? There are loads of examples: writer, runner, singer…
The most common way (there are - as usual - exceptions!) is to add --wr (masculine) or --wraig (feminine) (or --wyr for plural) to the end, so for speaker/s it would be:
siaradwr / siaradwraig / siaradwyr
runner:
rhedwr / rhedwraig / rhedwyr
writer:
ysgrifennwr / ysgrifenwraig / ysgrifennwyr
but singer is one of the different ones:
canwr (masculine plural: canwyr) / cantores (feminine plural: cantoresau) but can also be: cantor (plural: cantorion… as in the national anthem!)
I don’t have my usual reference stuff with me (at work), but I may have a ‘cheat sheet’ list somewhere at home, so I’ll look tonight!
There’s another fairly common one – -ydd e.g. cyflwynydd (‘presenter’) from cyflwyno ‘to present’, enillydd ‘winner’ (enill) etc. Plural is e.g. cyflwynyddion according to the dictionary, but I think I’ve seen one somewhere that was -ydd in the singular and then used -wyr (as if from one of the forms @siaronjames gave) in the plural…
Yes, --ydd is another one. For instance, my job is an ‘ymchwilydd’ and several of us would be ‘ymchwilwyr’.
Enillwyr is indeed the plural for winners (enillwr/enillwraig) and cyflwynwyr is the plural of cyflwynydd (and you will sometimes get cyflwynwraig for a female presenter too).
As I said, there are plenty of exceptions and there is no straightforward way to know which is used when. I thought I had a cheat-sheet giving hints (exceptions excluded) as to what could be the ‘best guess’ which to use, but I haven’t been able to find it. Sorry guys!
Is there any move at all towards losing the sex difference? What with trans rights and general rejection of treating prople differently, well, I feel very odd if I would have to be an athrowes or whatever a female scientist is!
My wife was the gweiniddydd / administrator (as opposed to gweiniddraig) in Adran Hanes & Hanes Cymru (Welsh and Welsh History Dept) and I was a darlitthydd / lecturer (as opposed to darlitthwr) in Adran Ffiseg (Physics). This was common practice in UCWAber / CPCAber when I arrived in 1990.
Edit: Perhaps I should have made it clear that “gweinyddydd”, “darlithydd” and many other such words are "gender non-specific"l
The problem is that when you’re talking about an abstract teacher (for example) you have to use athro. This brings with it all sorts of baggage about male defaults, assumptions about what an abstract teacher looks like (a man?) and so on. It makes me feel uncomfortable, and I’m a bloke (was going to say “last time I checked”, but that would be stupid). If I were a woman, I think the chances are that I would be more than uncomfortable with this.
I really, really love Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man. (I know, that looks very much like a tangent: bear with me.) I love the fact that he is so passionate about both sciences and arts – that he did some maths alongside Johnny von Neumann and edited my Penguin anthology of William Blake. He was one of the speakers at a conference my dad went to, aged about 17, just after WWII, arguing passionately for an ideal of European reintegration that might prevent future wars. (I’m not going to embark on Brexit here, but it was never just about trade.) My son is named after him.
But when you watch the old TV series, you find it’s full, time and time again, of him saying ‘he’ where he means ‘a person’, ‘people in general’: in the 1970s, for male writers, women were invisible, subsumed into the generic male. And it grates on me now, even as a man, watching it, and it is right that it should: we’ve moved on.
But as far as Welsh goes – I don’t know. Languages with gramatically marked gender have a harder time of it, I think: in French I believe the trend now is to use un/une but keep the noun unchanging – une acteur presumably, like une professeur, rather than une actrice. But (a) that still means that the male noun becomes the default noun – just as you were saying about athro – leaving women’s role arguably less visible; and (b) there’s no Welsh for une, although I guess you could have y meddyg and y feddyg.
Tl;dr – trying to change sexism in language is good, but I don’t know how it works/could work in Welsh.
Diolch yn fawr for all the thoughtful comments about male/female nouns. I was subsumed for most of my career. In Wales, if I said I worked in London next, invariably, came the question, “Oh, are you a teacher?” When told I worked in Medical Research, reaction tended to be a sort of awe which implied that I had been lumped in with my hero(ine) Maria Sklodowska Curie! I have watched the change, especially lately, as females are finally approaching somewhere not quite so far from equality. I do not want to hurt Cymraeg! I love yr hen iaith. But, as the equality or opportunity movement gains momentum, will not a change in Cymraeg be inevitable! And. clearly, @HuwJones has told us it is! ‘wr’ and ‘wraig’ is going and ‘dydd’ has come!
It’s a problem, and the language(s) are still evolving, I suppose.
I still catch myself almost saying “actress”, then biting my tongue and changing it to “actor”, and it sounds a bit false. And then sometimes I’ll hear even a quite young female thespian referring to “actresses”, so it’s not like that word has gone out altogether.
Then we went through all that silliness with “Madam Chairman” “Madam Chairperson” “Chairperson”
and then “Chair” (which I think is as silly as any of them). I always liked the suggestion of “President”, i.e. person who presides over a meeting, or company, or whatever. It says what the job is, and is gender-neutral. Sounds a bit grand though if it’s just a meeting of the work tea-club or whatever.
Unfortunately in WI, and various other organisations of which I used to have experience, in those days “Madam President” was used as often as “Madam Chairman”! Although, at least that doesn’t involve actually saying “Madam …man”!
That’s a point; The US president is always addressed directly as “Mr President”, so when a woman finally succeeds to that office, will it be “Mrs President” or “Madam President”, or can anyone come up with a title in the vocative which is gender neutral, and still shows respect?
Actually, I think “Madam President” sounds ok. The “Madam” merely reflects her gender, and the President part is gender neutral, so there are no assumptions here that the presidency is a male thing (even though it actually has been since its inception).
If the future non-male President of the USA does not identify with being a woman, they could just be addressed in the vocative as “President”, just as UK PMs are addressed as “Prime Minister”, not “Mr Prime Minister”, although the US officials might take some time to get used to it.