Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Looks like I got that wrong then! Thanks for the quick answer!! :slight_smile:

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We all get things wrong, Dai - part of the learning process :slight_smile:

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In today’s Eastcoast Meetup we were talking about cookies and milk and decided we would like to “dunk” them in them but did not know the word, and neither did our dictionaries. What is the word/phrase to dunk a cookie?

When I run into something I can’t find in the dictionary, I try to think of another word that means something similar. In this case I looked up “dip” and Gareth King’s dictionary helpfully said (in liquid) and gave me the word trochi. When I looked that up (in another dictionary) on the Welsh side, it said that trochi means “to immerse”

So perhaps that would be the word to use? That is a guess; there might be a more commonly used phrase for that action that I don’t know.

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Thank you for the great idea Sionned, and based upon what you found, trochi is the proper verb, so, “Dw i’n leicio trochi bisgedi mewn llath.”

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Since someone in this forum suggested this dictionary http://geiriaduracademi.org I’ve been able to find almost every word I’d like to use.

However, understanding which one to use in the context and how (where in the sentence, mutated or not etc) is a whole different thing.
I totally had forgotten the pain of translating full sentences almost word by word. :scream:
It makes me feel back at school again!

These days I’m practicing making sentences beyond my grasp.
Rwy’n hoffi trochi bisgedi mewn coffi yn lle llaeth. Ond byddai pain au chocolat mewn cappuccino well fyth.
How wrong is that? :smile:

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New quick question: clwydda ?

I’ve been listening to some Anweledig, and found some lyrics transcribed online. In Llenwi fy LLygid there’s a line which is transcribed ma raid i ni ddiodda clwydda propoganda which I take to mean “We have to suffer/endure hearing propaganda” (or words to that effect). That sounds reasonably faithful to what I hear, but I can’t find clwydda anywhere in the GPC.

So: does it mean clywed? Is it a transcription error? Is it just too non-standard a dialect form for the GPC to have seen fit to include it? Is it just the jingle of ddiodda - clwydda and it should ‘really’ be clywed? Something else I haven’t thought of? Diolch!

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Thank you for asking!

clwydda = celwyddau = lies

ma raid i ni ddiodda clwydda propoganda = we have to suffer propaganda lies

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I’m reading Y Nant by Bet Jones. The caretaker has just returned to his cottage and there’s a snow storm going on. So he’s made a cup of tea and he’s thinking about the day ‘wrth ddowcio bisged Garibaldi i’w de’!

Ddowcio means to duck! I’ll remember that now :slight_smile:

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Is hoffi a newer word than lico then?

Trying to make hoff o into a verb?

I think though its normal for smaller languages to experience some counter-culture to the very dominated English language culture in the world. I would hardly call it ‘fanatical’

I’m hearing young people starting to use “lyfo” (love-o) to mean sexual attraction - when it was only coming into use as ‘non-sexual attraction’ … very odd change to me … caru is now being relegated to rarity among some (going the way of serch I suppose), although I still use it.

In other languages resisting heavy anglicisation, people are not always called fanatics, sometimes lauded! I’ve been scolded for using ‘hoffi’ for instance - but never scolded for speaking half english and welsh at the same time. The only fanatics Ive met out in the sticks were those worried about “purists killing off the language”. Different experiences I suppose living towards England?

If people are that insecure about their mother language that they drop it because of fear of being judged, what does this say about Welsh culture? :open_mouth: I’ve not met this from stronger language communities when I worked in Europe. Maybe we need a stronger backbone, much of life is wishing we were better or more resilient but never getting round to it.

My Grandmother used to be very upset that she could not write well in Welsh, but I had to tell her it was not her fault that there was no Welsh medium schools in her region back then. Its only very recently any assemblage of Welsh institutions including educational ones are appearing. Without them a language can be doomed. Languages need help to survive, English has incredible levels of help! :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve always been a stubborn rebellious mule who likes being a contrarian, so just thoughts!

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Feeling sad, and a little uncomfortable. How can I express the root of the pain? I accept the rough & tumble of cultures competing, yet:

Beauty is in the (experienced or naïve) eye/ear of the beholder/harker… the seeing/hearing person.

…and the combined work of gaze/attention/concentration givers and lenders, in their task of communication together, signalling intent and worth…

with the focus of the message giver being [able, permitted to be] given over to creativity… that luxury bestowed by consent of attention-givers: -

all of this, above,

is Beauty.

Is there a language that does not sound beautiful in that first attempt at “words” by an infant? Music to their parents’ ears… to the global village.

“Greater Germany” took a while [20th Century] to recover its singing voice in its own language once its “disgrace” was blatantly evident globally. We have to examine the intent (and the fullest context surely) associated with sounds & sights presented to us, and the fullest context associated with their reception… Resonances…

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beautiful sounds - on or off music
my amateur & high-minded/high-handed philosophising/riffings/pronouncement
on Beauty -

riding on @Betterlatethan Sue’s and @gisella-albertini Gisella’s gentle musings (I apologise for my insensitivity there)

  • arose from experiencing much mutual disdain across language borderlands in NW of the island of Ireland. Also ongoing philosophising overheard on buses I take in my everyday life in Oldbury, West Mids, England, about the hatefulness of foreign languages & accents to locals. With better IT skills I might have placed it better.

I suspect I’ve done an Unbeautiful Thing, myself… (eto)…

One surprising thing about Welsh I’ve noticed recently is how many verbs sound almost the same as the English (or Italian) ones - just with an “io” at the end.
I’m going to keep it in mind as language-survival trick, often worth a try.

By the way are biscuits called Garibaldi a Welsh specialty? That’s pretty funny! :open_mouth:

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@lornarhodes
Well, for me it’s not a matter of one or more languages being in any way better than the others. It’s just a fact that most Italians perceive Italian and romance languages as nicer, sweeter, naturally more pleasant.
And usually tend to dislike Northern European languages that have harsh sounds and a funny intonation - to our ears.

On top of that, there are mysteries of personal and totally subjective taste:

I remember myself falling in love with English, and liking it more than Italian, since the first time I heard it by accident on TV or radio, when I was very small.

Just as I remember not really enjoyng the sound of German, that I heard from my relatives from the North East of Italy, also when I was very small.

Or I remember, later, loving the sound of Welsh when I first heard it in those Datblygu songs.

I don’t really know why it is so. And right or wrong as it may be, saying they all sound the same to me would just mean lying!

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Honesty fully respected and honoured… Diolch i ti am dy ateb (?) (response, dw i isio deud)

Mae’n ddiddorol y pwnc “taste” (blasus ok here?) - mae’n matter of personal taste, everybody’s allowed it.

I think I see tastes being manipulated in an orchestrated fashion, though.

I hate the fact that traditional British upper echelons (some - even plenty - of honourable exceptions, I’m glad to admit) were claiming Italian opera, for example, as a mark of refined taste for themselves, and when they do or crude advertising does, I’m put off sharing my enjoyment.

Or French being beautiful with music. Or the resorts of the Costa del Sol being claimed exclusively for those who are differently determinedly dismissive of local cultures… if it happens, which I have not seen, never been.

My gruff non francophone boyfriend, on our first and only day-trip to France, communicated in nods and grunts with his interlocuteur a local Normandy counterpoint about the saucisson on offer. My degree was very useful so I could confirm pepper, salt, other guessable coatings, and offer that cendres were cinders. The actual purchase transaction was handled non-verbally by the two country-dwellers who understood each other’s body language and it was a beautiful moment. I was redundant.

French & Italian singing styles adapt themselves to all sorts of music styles: rap, punk, etc. German can be most mellifluous. Heard with different, less dismissive than usual northern-biased ears I reheard Bavarian speech differently. Sur le vif was an innovative BBC course using sound recordings of French from all over France. No doubt someone has found some Italian accents that might not fit Grand Opera… Sôri, dw i’n “riffio” rŵan…

Direct message instead @gisella-albertini :smiley_cat:?

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English rather than Welsh, but yes, there are biscuits in Britain named after Garibaldi. See the History section here:

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The town of Eccles, of course, takes it’s name from Brythonic/Early Welsh (eglwys), so there’s a connection there.

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Straying even further off topic - a customer bought a pack of Eccles cakes the other day. He commented that he always called them Welsh cakes because they were the same. I held my tongue, but I imagined the entire populations of Wales and Lancashire rising up in wrath.
Sue

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Almost not at all :slight_smile: [Go for ‘mewn cappuccino yn well fyth’[.

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