You’ll often hear shwt gymaint in the south for that
2 Likes
Definitely - I really enjoyed our chat! I love having the occasional Skype with forum people, but time is not my friend… Anyone feel free to pm me for Thurs or Fri in school time - if I say no, it’s not for lack of enthusiasm![quote=“aran, post:1406, topic:3153”]
‘strictly incorrect’ - the kind of thing that language police would turn their noses up at.
[/quote]
Ah, I guess my instinct to avoid picking it up was probably correct then. (As a consiencious dysgwraig!) I wonder if the same goes for ‘hawsach’ - or whether that is a police-acceptable variant?
So far from it that it even makes me wince slightly…
Ooh, interesting. It’s only after having learnt a fairly tolerable amount of Welsh that I feel like I’m getting bit of insight into the state of the language.
I was talking about a very intelligent and articulate person, who lives a significant amount of her life in Welsh. But she has said that she feels an uncomfortable sort of dialect inferiority when talking to a ‘language police’ type of Welsh speaker, and she doesn’t feel very confident about writing anything very serious. That’s in spite of having gone to school in Welsh.
It all doesn’t bode very well for the language I don’t think. (In addition to the fact that the majority of people I know who can speak Welsh in the Vale of Glamorgan don’t.)
1 Like
Not to counter what Aran says, but just going off on a bit of a tangent, “hawsach” is mentioned in the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru as being an alternative used by a few what you might call “eminent writers” which the grammar police like, even including William Salesbury’s New Testament-
“Can ys hawsach i gamel vyned trwy grau nodwydd ddur” ayyb.
(Though Salesbury’s use of the language in the bible was… Well, not as well thought of as Willam Morgan’s!)
Other “eminent writers” used it apparently though. Just mentioning this as I say, not to counter what Aran says (whose use of the language is far more relevant to how it is used both ‘normally’ 
and in modern grammar police terms than the above), but to show that strict grammar can be a pretty arbitrary thing, which changes over time, and if someone uses something in dialect or in personal usage, it shouldn’t be thought of as intrinsically wrong because it doesn’t conform to what is thought of as right and proper nowadays.
At least, I think that is what I am saying… I may have lost track now …
1 Like
“Hawsach” was used by someone, forget who, in Vaughan Roderick’s political chat the other day, and I believe the standard of spoken Welsh there is usually pretty good.
Mind you, people make grammatical “mistakes” all the time in all languages. My favourite wince in English is “I should of” instead of “I should have”.
1 Like
that does sound interesting and new to me. diolch yn fawr iawn
I was sat or even I was sat sitting!!
1 Like
I can sense this going down the “I was thinking to myself” or “reversing backwards” route. 
Anyway, using “mor cymaint” or “hawsach” is akin to saying “rhy gormod”, surely? I have a work colleague who often says things like “more easier”, now that makes me shudder. 
3 Likes
Hello, here is a tiny question:
I’ve been learning simple phrases about where I live and have been grappling with the nasal mutation to say I live in Crosskeys. So the question is whether places that don’t have a Welsh name still mutate? Yng Nghrosskeys is quite a mouthful…
People play pretty fast and loose with that - some English names will get mutated sometimes, plenty of others won’t - I would expect to hear ‘yn Crosskeys’ more often than ‘yng Nghrosskeys’, and the whole name thing is shifting ground even with Welsh names - so I wouldn’t be surprised to hear ‘yn Pont-y-Cymer’ (which I gather is the Welsh name) as well as ‘ym Mhont-y-Cymer’… 
Couldn’t agree more strongly even if I went on an ‘Agreeing strongly’ course.
This, I think, is pretty common - there are plenty of questions to be asked about literacy rates (and confidence in the written language) in Welsh medium education over the last fifty years, although anecdotally things are a lot better now than even twenty or thirty years ago…
3 Likes
Well having been in welsh language education 35 years ago i can relate to that. We were being taught an academic course. No wonder we could never speak it!
1 Like
Ah ha, thanks aran.
I don’t think there is a welsh name (at least in common usage) otherwise it wouldn’t be Campws Crosskeys of Coleg Gwent - it’d be something else. Of course they’re aren’t too many Welsh speakers around here, so when I’ve got enough language to meet and ask them I’ll find out
It’d be nice if there were a few more Welsh names around here, maybe I should start a campaign
Do any of you feel the compulsion to translate every English place name? I tend to and I’m not even Welsh! My Newport-bought sat-nav pronounced Upper Eastern Avenue in Horsham as “Eeper …”
1 Like
Hahaha, I was just now looking up the Welsh names for places in England and attempting rough translations of places where my relatives live that don’t have ‘official’ ones!
1 Like
Only if you think that it is “hawdd”, “haws” rather than “hawdd”, “hawsach”.
If you think the latter, it is like saying “easier”, rather than “more easier”
But all of the above, of course.
1 Like
Yeah, I’d imagine not! - seems to have been the original name, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosskeys
I would choose confusing the singular and plural as in:
There are a list of things to do.
2 Likes
Lots of places in the South Wales valleys didn’t exist as villages or towns before the industrial revolution - maybe there were field names etc. Ammanford was originally cross inn and changed to Ammanford in 1880 and presumably Rhydaman at the same time? Port Talbot is one that only has the English spelling on the M4 signs - I guess there isn’t a Welsh version? Don’t think Cross Hands has a Welsh version either does it?
Bargoed surprised me the first time I saw the sign and saw the Welsh translation as bargod.
It doesn’t really make any difference, but Crosskeys (or Cross Keys) didn’t exist before 1840ish. It was a part of Risca and as the mines expanded became a place to live for miners from the Blackvein pit, who were often from England, eventually it became known as Crosskeys after the pub for convenience. They only strange thing is that it wasn’t given a Welsh name unlike other local places. I guess that was just because nobody lived here before and when it needed a name the English one was the one used.
If it had a Welsh name it went out of use hundreds of years ago and it seems unlikely it was a Ponty as the main bridges here are over the canal and the railway.