Sain Ffaganaidd

I came across this phrase in a novel I am reading: ‘un ffôn a chyfrifiadur Sain Ffaganaidd yr olwg’. This caused me some perplexity – I wondered if Sain Ffaganaidd was some Welsh company making computers - but then I found the delightful verb ‘sanffaganeiddio’ in the dictionary, defined as ‘to cause (something) to be like a building or object in the museum of Welsh Life at St Fagans’, so I am guessing the best English translation would be ‘one phone and a computer that looked as if it had come out of the ark’ – right? I guess there is no shortcut to getting attuned to this sort of cultural reference, you just have to try to work out such things as you come across them, unless of course anyone knows different….

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Hi David - yes, we discussed the (English) -ish = (Welsh) -aidd equivalence on here quite recently. So the sentence translates literally as something like “one 'phone and a computer with Saint Fagan-ish appearance”. I quite like that! :slight_smile:

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