I was surprised and intrigued to read that Pembrokeshire (where I’m from) has its own dialect! And also a little sad that i grew up there yet haven’t heard it (or rather, still can’t understand Welsh well enough to ‘hear’ it) … oh well, at least I’m correcting that now
I wondered what other people’s experience of these different dialects are … do people (more advanced learners than me and also fluent speakers) have trouble understanding people from different regions? It also made me think about the possible influence of SSIW: although there are separate north and south versions, there are fewer versions of the course than there are dialects, so perhaps this (and other courses) might have an effect of standardising the language over the next few years, given that the million speakers project will give rise to an explosion of learners (we hope!) and that these learners will not all arise ‘organically’ from individual dialect regions, but will rely on courses which give a more standardised form of Welsh. Maybe that will lead to some new dialects. Am exciting time.
S’mae Rebecca.
We have (the SSiW community over the years) touched on this very idea numerous times in different places/threads. The ‘standard’ is a necessary tool, but there is nothing to stop you from later delving into forms, aphorisms, idioms and regionally specific terms later.
You may then become unintelligible to the rest of us and bring back some lively confusion and diversity!
Diolch@rebecca - interesting article and well worth a read - and the book he mentions (‘Dweud Eich Dweud’) has proved very useful for me in trying to fathom the meaning of a good few words
Well, from my experience, I think it can be difficult to pinpoint sometimes whether slowness to grasp what someone might be saying is down to a strong accent, use of dialect or lack of familiarity with words relating to a specific context but which may be used across Wales - you can sometimes infer meaning from the context, but other times I’ve had to ask for clarification, e.g. someone talking about a shetin (eh?) which turned out to be a local word for ‘hedge’. And then there are things like the way ‘a’ is often pronounced in Sir Drefaldwyn so that bach is pronounced bech with on ‘open’ e (i.e. same as the ‘ea’ in ‘bear’), or in Sir Benffrowes or cwêd etc instead of oes or coed etc. But rather encouragingly, once you realise that’s what people say or how they say it, it seems to stick.
It’s set me thinking now about other dialect words, e.g. for sweets Dweud Eich Dweud has this wonderful list
fferins - N Wales
cisys - Dyfed
da-da - N Wales
loshin - S Wales
melysion Literary & coloquial Welsh
minciag Powys
neisis Pembs.
pethau da N Wales
taffins Glam.
And I must share the next entry in the book which has 'ffernols (derived from uffernol, apparently) as a N Wales word for ‘little horrors’ (= ‘children’, for those outside the UK )
Further along this train of thought, does anyone know anything about regional variations in Cymraeg in ‘pax words’ used in children’s games? In England just ‘pax’ itself is quite common but there are a lot of regional variations, e.g. where I grew up in NW Surrey ‘fainites’ was the word used.
… and (sorry!) before my train of thought hits the buffers, given the significantly different histories of Wales and England, would anyone perhaps know if there are or were traditional children’s games which are specific to Wales or to parts of Wales?
Barley is common on both sides of the border. It looks like it may come from French (parler to talk) or maybe from mid twentieth century western films: parlay, a temporary truce and maybe peace talks between the cowboys and the native people, probably also ultimately derived from the same French language source.
No, not really - people tend to ham it up a bit when someone sounds strongly dialectical, so you’ll hear plenty of ‘Ooh, couldn’t understand what they were saying’ but it always needs to be taken with a fairly hefty pinch of salt…
I think its more a matter of enjoying the different dialects than not understanding them. I notice that even the various 1st language children that attend the Ty Tawe cofee mornings have different accents, as they live a few miles apart from each other in the same valley. Its great that they are allowed to speak this way.
Also, did anyone hear the kids from Newport, Gwent speaking on Radio Cymru this morning? I’d say that the the difference in their Welsh accent from say SW Wales, was probably more apparent than the difference in English. Really cool.
Sorry, I should have explained - to borrow from the Collins Dictionary again it’a “a cry for truce or respite from the rules of a game”, e.g. if someone needs to tie up a shoelace in the middle playing a game or they want a chance to get their breath back or, maybe nowadays, if they’ve just received a text message on their cellphone.
There was some research done on pax words a few years ago in England which found a surprising variety of different pax words words still in use by children in different areas (I can’t remember now whether it have just England, the whole of the UK or only the southern part of England)
Also great how the Welsh and English language accents go in parallel, if you get what I mean. Say Carmarthen, Bangor etc, you can recognise them in both languages.
Interestingly, I have found no mention of the word quinces (possibly a corruption of cruces?), which I remember from primary school in 'sixties/'seventies Bedford. Maybe a decade ago, we visited relatives in the Sandy/Biggleswade/Potton area and found that the word was still in use by our young niece.
Diolch@robbruce - interesting article!
Still wondering about truce terms in Cymraeg though - a quick check in the online Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru gives barli as a truce term (in use in Ceredigion in 1922), so not much difference there, but given the variation in England it would be bit surprising if there weren’t a lot of other truce terms in Cymraeg
My memory has just been jogged. It was the article about the FA Cup football match which will take place between Newport and Manchester City. Which reminds me that one boy who was speaking in Welsh, was pronouncing it with a tapped t: “Man Ci_y”.
Think we used to say “trucies” (from “truce” of course).
On other dialect words, well, probably not dialect as such, but I noticed “fodan” being used for “girl-friend” on Rownd a Rownd recently. https://geiriaduracademi.org/ shows it as being NW usage. It lists “modan” separately with the same meaning.
Interesting! One of the reasons I wanted to listen. Until the last few years young people from Newport have mostly gone to Gwynlliw school in Pontypool for secondary education through the medium of Welsh, and I think it has its own ccent (a bit like the Cymraeg Lantafaidd in Cardiff).
