I am reading a Welsh novel called ‘Chwalfa’ by T. Rowland Hughes and am pleased to find that with a bit of help from the dictionary I can get 99.9% of it, but occasionally there is a word or expression that stumps me. As here, where an old sailor is talking to young Llew, who is feeling homesick on his first voyage. ‘Be wyt ti’n wneud? Edrach fel brych, fel ’tasa’r Doctor roi rhyw ddeufis arall iti i fyw?’ – ‘What are you doing? Looking like ?, as if the Doctor had given you another two months to live?’ But what is this ‘brych’? The dictionary gives ‘spot, speck, blemish, mistake’, which don’t seem to fit, and also gives ‘cow’s afterbirth’. My wild guess is that ‘looking like a cow’s afterbirth’ might be a Welsh idiom equivalent to our ‘with a face like a wet weekend’, but I can find no confirmation of this and could be on the wrong track entirely. As usual, any enlightenment gratefully received!
Great. If you are understanding 99% of it, I wouldn’t worry about it. In time you’ll come across the word until it makes sense. I understand a lot less but am happy to read books now without dictionaries and put up with the odd sentence that i don’t understand.
My dictionary comes up freckles/ speckled, so this suggests simply looking like you are ill?
Yeah, this - bit like ‘fel llo’ - for someone looking useless, dull, bit thick, bit wet, etc…
Helo 'na! Patrick sy 'ma!
Ga i awgrymu “Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru” Ar-lein? / May I suggest the online dictionary?
http://welsh-dictionary.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html
Mae’n dweud:
"Ar lafar yn ddirmygus yng Ngwynedd yn yr ystyr ‘person â golwch druenus a chrebachlyd arno’, ‘Mae o’n edrych fel brych’’"
It says:
“Mockingly, in Gwynedd speech, with the meaning ‘person who looks pitiful and decrepit’, 'He’s looking like a cow’s just dropped ‘im [perhaps?]’”
HWYL FAWR!