I would suggest you try “If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller” by Italo Calvino, as it’s written in the second person (making a very odd read), but it’s a dreadful book, so I won’t.
Heyyyy, Calvino is one of the best Italian authors!
Or at least, one of my favorites.
I don’t know how it looks in English or in Welsh, but in Italian it’s just as if there was (or were? Never really figured it out) a narrator or an off-voice talking to the reader, mixed in the stories.
I enjoyed it!
Going backwards (with the story that inspired my previous questions, but following my curiosity and not the chronological order): Dyn yn mynd a’i gar i’r garej translated as A man takes his car to the garage
So would these make sense?
Ma fe’n mynd a’i gi i’r parc
Oedd hi’n mynd James i’r ysgol
Rhaid i fi mynd fy beic i’r mecanic
I hated it! I think the problem was that the novelty of it being in second-person wore off VERY quickly, and then there was very little plot. Or at least no plot I cared about. I didn’t care about the protagonist; I didn’t care about the woman he met; and I didn’t care whether he got to the bottom of the mystery regarding the misprinted books. I gave up after about 9 chapters.
Translated versions of books, stories, novels and of course, even more, poems and song lyrics often miss a lot of the original version.
This might be the case.
Or maybe it’s just a matter of personal taste and preferences!
[edit] From my point of view I can only say he’s an amazing writer, and I would second Alexander Arguelles that @mikeellwood mentioned in other posts about reading as much as possible in the original languages (and not only the books in his list!).
I didn’t mean to be disparaging about Italian, I was just giving the usual response I hear when I tell people I’m learning Welsh, “Why do you want to learn WELSH?! Nobody speaks it!”
Yeah, I know!
But it’s a fact that compared to the most spoken languages in the world, Italian is small - it’s just spoken in one Country that’s also quickly losing importance, therefore getting more and more useless!
If someone asked you how you’re learning Welsh, how would you answer?
In Italian I would use “with” before any instrument, source or method. I don’t know if it’s correct in Welsh.
Do you use “gyda”?
Gyda SSiW?
Gyda cwrs ar-lein?
Gyda caneuon? (For me it’s true!).
Although I’d probably not say “gyda caneuon” - i think this might be my English ear which wants to say "drwy, because in English I’d say with for all of them except songs, when I’d say “through”.
I’m not sure if this carries over to Welsh though.
Italian may be smaller than some, but what about opera? It’s a beautiful language for singing. I did start out to learn Italian, mainly for the libretti, but somehow got sidetracked to Welsh.
Sue
By the way: I mentioned another academic linguist, Stephen Krashen, in another thread. He takes a similar view in one sense: read the target language as much as possible. But he’s fine with what you might call “trashy” novels (as well as good/great books, I’m sure). Just so long as you are reading…
(BTW, I’m not saying that the Italian author mentioned above writes trashy novels…just that it’s ok to read them if you want to (or if that’s all you can find that are at the right level for you).
I don’t know the correct answer to this, but as a northern learner, I’d be tempted to use “gan” where you have used “gyda”, and I think this (as well as meaning “with”) can have a sense of “through” or “via”, so I’d kind of think of it “I am learning Welsh through SSiW” or
“I am learning Welsh via SSiW”.
And as “gyda” is (sort of) the southern equivalent of northern “gan”, then I think your examples should be ok. (But open to correction, of course).
Oh yes, I agree that Italian and I would add Spanish, French and Portuguese just naturally sound beautiful on music.
I’d also say English, although with a different style, that I have to admit I always liked better than any other language since I was a little child (I don’t know exactly why).
I also have to admit that we (Italians) tend to have prejudices towards Northern European languages in particular as being quite unsuitable for singing except for a few specific genres (I would say ancient folk or really strange experimental music).
And that’s pretty much what shocked me and hooked me about Welsh: “It’s a Northern European Language, and it sounds so amazingly good on music?! How could that be! I’ll have to find out!!!”