I read this in English, and really enjoyed it, too. Not ready to try the Welsh yet The only book Iâve finished is âe-ffrindiauâ, which I liked and recommend for a first book. It was a great feeling of accomplishment to finish it! I think I need to understand the âshort formsâ before I try anything more difficult. I have âSgwrsâ by Lois Arnold and âBywyd Blodwen Jonesâ to try next. Iâve also been dipping into âCant y Cantâ, and am enjoying âLingo Newyddâ - shorter articles feel like less of a project, given my level of Welsh at the moment (2/3 of the way through Course 2).
Love this thread - what a great resource! Thanks, @seren
I donât really deserve the credit!! I just asked in passing about a thread with something about books, @seren said we could start one, or someone did! And @seren beat me to it!! But it was her subject really. Really I wanted somewhere to mention y siop!!
Well, you inspired me, so you do deserve all the credit:)
By the way, I want to make a small announcement here: @ramblingjohn and I were talking yesterday and we thought it might be a good idea if some of us, âintermediateâ learners, started a sort of a reading club here. By which I mean that we could try and read the same book (let it be âBlasuâ, since it was recommended by⌠well, by practically everyone!), one or two chapters a week, and then discuss it at our skype meeting or here, in Cymraeg, of course.
Iâm not trying to disobey Aran here, but since by the beginning of course 2-3 most of us are reading anyway, why not turn it into an opportunity to speak?
If I was reading a lot, Iâd say âWhat a good idea!â. It is a good idea!
As it is, Iâll probably get âBlasuâ, but I do find reading harder since my cataract ops and my Cymraeg isnât really up to serious reading! So I will pick at it from the edges, doing a bit here and there!!
If youâre interested in day to day life in the Wales in the past - I think the book in the following link would be good. It was a compilation of newspaper writings on the South Wales valleys between 1850 and 1890. It was then translated into English in 1950s.
I love the different style of language in this - the language is simple, but very descriptive. Despite the old-fashioned Welsh it is very easy to read and flows very nicely painting vivid pictures of Life in the South Wales valleys upto and including the Coal-rush to the Rhondda in the industrial revolution.
I have not got the print versions of these and they arenât available as ebooks I donât think - but I intend to get them
I have recently completed Course 2 of SSiW and have just finished reading Ffenestri by Lois Arnold. I thought this collection of short stories and excellent poems were hugely suited to learners like myself, a learner who is undertaking the superb SSiW courses but who wants to develop reading and comprehension skills. The stories are written at increasing levels of grammatical complexity and are mainly straightforward especially if you read them out loud to yourself. I recommend this book unreservedly - mae feân bendigedig.
I like it because this is where I am from and I can picture all the places and imagine the sort of people - it mentions things like a fair in a place called Ynys-y-bwl, where the men drink and eat too much - I donât know all the words, but itâs mostly not too difficult to imagine what they are and what they meanâŚ
Dwy neu dair cinio ar ddiwrnod ffair, ac ni Ĺľyr neb ddim pa faint o gwrw. Glwth yw Lewis o ran chwaeth, o ran ffurf ei gorff, ac o ran ei holl arferion. Arwyddair ei fywyd, ac y mae yn ei adrodd yn fynych-â Byw yn llawen, a marw a bola llawn.â Wel, y mae Lewis yn y cornel yn edrych yn debyg iawn i ddyn wedi ei wneud o lawer o wlan, ac wyneb gosod wedi ei beintio dipyti yn goch-ond yn fuan dengys Lewis nad dyn gwlân yw ef-os yw yfed cwrw, a siarad geiiiau pigog yn profi rhywbeth. Cyrner Lewis arno fod yn dduwiol iawn, a rhybuddia y cwmni i fod yn ofalus am eu bywyd, maeân edryrh mor sobr i sant, ac yn terfynu ei bregeth ddifrifol trwy ddweud, -
Cyn mynd oâr defaid allan
Mae caead drws y gorlan,
Cyn delo Barn mae dadlu,
Cyn henaint y mae gwellu,
Heddiw mae edifaru,
Rhag mai rhy hwyr yfory
@seren, @tatjana, and any others interested, Tim from College Street Books tells me that a customer in Germany paid him with a sterling cheque he got from his bank in Germany. I have never heard of these, but you may find banks in your countries will issue cheques in sterling!!
I pay with PayPal if only possible so mostly I donât have those problems. Itâs more problem that shipping is like it would worth more then book (or whatever product) itself âŚ
I have recently received a (2nd hand) copy of âDan Y Wenalltâ (i.e. the script, in book form) that I ordered online. This is of course the Welsh version of âUnder Milk Woodâ. I believe that it is not a translation, but an adaptation, so the Welsh words will not correspond to the English original (or will do so even less than a normal translation would have).
This adaptation was originally produced for a stage version done in 1967 (I found a 2nd-hand book based on that staging while in Wales last year, but didnât buy it at the time). However, this seems to be a later printing, as it refers also to a 1992 version done by Radio Cymru.
Of course, much more recently, weâve had the movie version, and I believe there is also an English-language version of that same movie. I assume that the latter is not just the English original, but a translation of the Welsh adaptation into English. (I believe the adaptation is a bit raunchier than the originalâŚor more explicitly raunchy⌠).
I still havenât seen the Dan Y Wenallt movie ⌠I foolishly missed it when it was on S4C, but Iâm hoping this book will be useful if and when I do get chance to see it (would be good if there were a DVD one day).
If anyone else is interested in this book, I noticed there were several copies still available at the well known online bookseller, and maybe elsewhere. I wouldnât say the language looks easy exactly - there are a lot of words that are unfamiliar to me at least - but there are only about 105 pages of text, and Iâd imagine that when performed, it is spoken fairly clearly, and a lot of the enjoyment will come from the sound of the language, as much as the meaning.
Iâve just remembered that there was a more recent production of it done on Radio Cymru a year or two ago - by the Pobol Y Cwm cast no less (if I remember correctly). Hopefully, Radio Cymru will repeat it one of these days.
My head is freaking out! Iâve just read the first few stories from âFfenestriâ by Lois Arnold in Welsh, I mean I read them normally, without my mind translating them into English as I went along and without looking up words. I know that they are written for for âMynediadâ level learners, but this is such a huge milestone for me!
Itâs a strange day, I was in Brecon (Aberhonddu) this morning and this chap came across to someone he knew in our group and started speaking Welsh: I could understand what he was saying, it was really freaky!
I know @Aran doesnât like Course 3 anymore, Iâm half way through it and it has been so helpful. Yes itâs lots of short forms in quick succession, but that is helpful in many ways. This has helped me dispel quite a bit of the âlanguage mistâ so I can meaningfully listen to people on the radio and indeed in the street!
I can speak and read Welsh, this is amazing. Of course there is still a long way to go, but I feel firmly on the journey. There was some leaflets through the door for the upcoming Welsh elections and I could read a good part of them in Welsh too, I just lack knowing the technical political words. Of course I still have to stop my head translating into English, but isnât this weird? This whole second language thing? I know most people on the planet can speak more than one language, but this is my countries language and I havenât been able to understand it to a decent degree before or feel confident enough to use it. I am so grateful to @Aran and all at SSiW (or DRyG)
Sorry Iâve gone off topic! Anyway, anyone who reads my posts knows of my love of childrenâs TV programmes, so are they any Welsh childrenâs books I should try and find copies of? I have a âHorrible Historiesâ type book, Iâm going to have a go with next, by Catrin Stevens and published by Gomer too.
There is a rather old (but I really really love it) book, available freely on archive.org. that is called âYstraeon o hanes Cymruâ. The language is a bit old-fashioned (though, I think, these verb forms are still very much in use in the super-formal Welsh), but it is rather simple because it was written for children and it has all the wonderful stories from the history of Wales. I finished reading it some time ago and since then Iâve been imagining how many spectacular films could be done based on these stories. And it has the saddest version of the legend of the sleeping king - a very widespread legend about someone who finds a cave where a king and his knights sleep. The person wakes them up by accident and then the king asks if the time has come yet, then the protagonist, scared, says that it hasnât come. Later he finds out that the king was asking if the time has come to deliver his country and he goes in search of the cave, but canât find it.
This story can be found in different countries and they are told about different kings, but in this book itâs about King Arthur. A young boy and a sorcerer find the cave, but the sorcerer only wants gold and jewels. So when the boy tries to wake the army by ringing a bell, the sorcerer, scared, tells them that the time hasnât come. And then: âArthur oedd yn siarad, ac yr oedd ei lais yn gryf a melus fel swn dyfroedd lawer. âFy mulwyr,â meddaĂŽ, âni ddaeth y dydd. Chwilio am aur maeâr Cymro acw yn ogof Arthur; nid oes ond plentyn am ganuâr gloch. Hunwch, fy rhyfelwyr, nid yw gwawr Cymru wedi torri eto.â
(It was Arthur who spoke, and his voice was strong and sweet like the sound of many waters. " My soldiersâ he said, " the day has not come. It is gold that yonder Welsh-man seeks, only a child wants to ring the bell. Sleep, my warriors, the morn of Wales has not yet dawned.â)
I recommend this book also because it has the parallel English text, so I really had no problems at all reading it now (Iâm in the middle of course 2).
The only book Iâve finished is âe-ffrindiauâ, which I liked and recommend for a first book. It was a great feeling of accomplishment to finish it! I think I need to understand the âshort formsâ before I try anything more difficult. I have âSgwrsâ by Lois Arnold and âBywyd Blodwen Jonesâ to try next. Iâve also been dipping into âCant y Cantâ, and am enjoying âLingo Newyddâ - shorter articles feel like less of a project, given my level of Welsh at the moment (2/3 of the way through Course 2).
