Good question - I was wondering how many large farms there would there have been prior to the agricultural revolution, a few estates maybe and lots of small holdings? Was it similar to the situation in the scottish highlands and Ireland?, which had a more clan/communal structure, that broke down in the agricultural revolution and gave rise to larger farms - I’ll be intrigued to know the answer.
Tref is a small collection of houses and cantref is a hundred dwellings and I wonder if naming was done via names of fields (cae, tir, ar etc), with it’s tref, cantref and house name? Those moving animals to summer pastures had a hafod and then a hendre or gaeadre for the winter, where I think they tended to share the house with the small-holders.
Maybe the concept of a farm as we know it today, with individual owners of hundreds of acres didn’t really apply as you said?
Probably the people to ask are on Twitter:
Y Wenwhyseg, and Robert McFarlane.
However, as you mentioned cae, perhaps also some toponyms that we still find in old farm names, such as Ynys or Pant.
GPC has: Darn bach o dir: plot (of land). I’m not sure if that would work for agriculture. Also I found gransh, Maenor, grêns, graens & grefan for grange.
Some other ones if you want to get away from enclosures, would be the buildings in the open farms:
demên, maerdref, maerdy, hafod, Hafoty, llaethdy
I think that Llanerch is more eccliastical.
A couple of final ancient Celtic ones from outside Wales: a lonnen (Lôn) was a safe place to milk cows and I think a Hala was an upland area where they collected sheep.
Ydy Llefar/u ar lafar?
(Is the word “Llefaru” found in common speech as an alternative to say/speak/tell?)
I read it today: used twice in a bible verse: Twice in the older WMB, once in the same verse in the Beibl Newydd and not at all in the Beible.net version.
Going on to common speech, it was mentioned in the GPC and Modern Welsh Dictionary as being up to date, especially in the sense of going on a bit.
I was just wondering if anyone actually hears it being used in the street etc in mainstream conversations.
Edited - It just struck me as being a possible stem for "Ar lafar
A decent percentage of daily news reports on radio Cymru end up with ‘according to a spokesman on behalf of xyz’
Yn ôl lefarydd o ran… heddlu, llwyodraeth Cymraeg etc etc
So it seems that variants are very much alive and kicking - I haven’t seen or heard it used for ‘to speak/ tell’ in my limited experience but that probably means it will crop up several times in the next few days!
If so, in brief, there are three levels, followed by the Advanced Content of learning, which is being added to on a weekly basis. Also, unlimited access to internet practice and this forum plus other social media guidance etc. internet. So no, you cant run out of material.
Plus, our old course material is still available, and people often find that worth a run through once they’ve finished the levels, just to pick up a few more patterns and different vocab.
I frealized I quite like dw i angen for I need (even though the Southern course teaches ma eisiau i fi).
But I really like the southern way to make negative sentences.
So I was wondering: would sai angen sound weird?
I’ve heard sai eisiai before (meaning I don’t want), so I guess it should work as well?
Yeah. Slightly tounge in cheek of me saying they would be Mid-Walians. I cant see why South Walians wouldn’t say it. Angen is very common. I’ll listen out.
Hi, I hope I have posted this right. Just a quick question that I couldn’t find: is the accent really obvious when an English person is speaking Welsh? Like when people from other countries first learn English? Or is it not as bad? Thanks!
There’s no yes or no answer to this - it’s very much an individual thing. I would say though that feedback the SSiW method regularly recieves would indicate that those learning with SSiW pick up a Welsh accent much easier and quicker than those learning by other methods.
I’m sure that like @siaronjames pointed out it’s an individual thing.
However I guess the hardest accent to spot is always…your own first language, isn’t it?
I think you can more easily notice the Italian inflections when I (or any Italian) speak Welsh or English - because they’re just “normal” to us.
While I suspect I’m more sensitive to English accent in Welsh. I very often hear it also in very fluent speakers - especially from some areas and cities - because it sounds quite different and more complicated to understand for me non-native English!
I just have a quick question and I don’t know if I’m asking in the right thread or whatever, but I’m wondering what the “TGAU” abbreviation in the SSiWelsh app stands for. I feel like I should know but I can’t figure it out. Thanks!
TGAU stands for “Tystysgrif Gyffredinol Addysg Uwchradd” and is the Welsh GCSE (the qualifications taken usually by 15/16 yearcolds at the end of normal high school).
Hi Miss Barrow, welcome to the forum. If you were to really try to imitate the natural speaker on the course (Catrin in the north, Iestyn in the south), I mean really try to copy exactly how they say everything, you will end up speaking very naturally. It’s worth the extra effort but an accent is sometimes nice though.
