She is AlexPolisTigers on some sites and she named previously herself on Twitter too so I know this is her’s. I also contributed some Slovene words occassionally when I was invited (and sometimes when I was not - hehe 
) I already published the link to her blog elswhere on here but it’s never one too many time to be published again. Despite it’s about “sirious” theme it’s fun and entertaining to read in deed.
Do choose Russian, if you decide to give it a try:)
I will be trying (the usual problem is worrying about giving the subject enough time).
When SSIR appears i’m really looking forward to listening, just to get a sense of how it sounds.
There was a wildlife series (in welsh) at the begging of the year, and wow what a beautiful country
with so much wildlife we would never see here. (i hope it will be repeated next year when i can
understand a little more).
Cheers J.P.
I have a very small interest in etymology, and no expertise whatsoever! The early Celtic form of “gof” is generally spoken of as being something along the lines of “goban”. Is the “gwobhros” you speak of accepted as its root? (I know nothing of Proto Indo European!)
I never learned to speak Russian, I’m afraid, just to translate scientific papers from Russian to English, around the time the first Sputniks were going into space and we were feeling very old fashioned!! However, if @ramblingjohn tries it, he will have a problem when he comes to want to read unless the website gives the Russian alphabet!!
Oh to be able to translate scientific papers, that sounds a great advantage and another big hill to me.
Learning the alphabet would take some time, but i have had advice on Russian keyboard which has a rather neat solution (first the alphabet, or in SSIR just speak and ignore the writting).
Cheers J.P.
Seren, how do you spell Stella and Stelly in Cyrillic? Стела/ы, Стелла/ы, Стеля/и, или Стелля/и? This will be a good test to see if I can get Cyrillic text in here. The Gwerthu brwsus po-russki link is http://www.transparent.com/russian/lets-practice-translating-a-dialogue/#comments
Tatiana, although you don’t list Russian as one of your languages I expect you’ll be OK with it anyway!
Henddraig, that was how I started with Russian too! When I did Chemistry at UMIST I did “Scientific Russian” and “Scientific German” as subsidiary courses. Many years later I got back into it, and when I started to make an effort at verbal I realised that a lot of my “assumed pronunciations” were hopelessly wrong and that I’d wasted my time practising the ability to make the sound of shch!
Listening to songs is in my opinion a great help in learning both Russian and Welsh. With Russian we took a a stage further and analysed quite a few songs for the grammatical and other learnings we could get out of them. For example the Seekers song “The carnival is over” is based on " “Из-за острова на стрежень” (aka Volga-Volga), which tells a much darker and misogynistic story (rebel leader jokingly taunted by his followers for carousing with his new wife shows his machismo by picking her up and flinging her out of the boat into the Volga). The word стрежень doesn’t seem to have a corresponding word in English (and I would guess not in Welsh) - it refers to the fastest flowing zone of a river - an important concept where big rivers like the Volga provided the major communication and transport routes - and stimulates reflection on hydrodynamics - is the стреженьis always the deepest part and is it always near the middle? A much nicer and very moving song is Журавли - there are many excellent versions of it on YouTube, and we did a Russian blog post on it a few years ago. It would be good to see it translated to Welsh - but beyond my capabilities at present.
Finally for now, regarding the different versions of the Soviet/Russian anthem. I think the differences were between times, not places. I think up until the Great Patriotic War they used the Internationale (a great tune, but not the same). After the war the present anthem was adopted, and the words included, of course reference to the great leaders Lenin and Stalin. Later there was some editing and reference to Stalin was removed. After 1991 a new anthem was introduced but was unpopular and the pre-1991 anthem was restored with a bit more editing. Although as far as I know I have no Russian DNA, hearing it makes my spine tingle and I feel proud that at least I can speak a bit of Russian! The Welsh anthem has a similar effect, but to be honest “God Save the Queen” does nothing for me. Older UK readers will remember the days when the national (i.e. GSTQ) anthem used to be played at the end of every cinema programme, and the audience were expected to stand until it was finished. What actually happened was that audiences learned to judge when the final scene of the feature film had come up and then there would be a stampede for the exit to get out before the credits were over. Those were the days (made popular by Mary Hopkin from Pontardawe, but no Welsh version as far as I know, and originally Russian -Дорогой длинною)!
Всего хорошого a pob hywl i pawb
Дава
Let’s see if I am still able to read this …
“Iz za ostrova na streženy”
“Žuravli”
And I didn’t cheat, That’s what I can remember from the 5th grade. Now I expect the corrections …
Well my Slovenian is based on read-across from a token effort I once made at Srbski-Hrvatski, but on that basis I give you full marks!
I’ve written what you’ve written just in latin, that’s all.
I’ve learnt Srbsko-Hrvatski in 5th grade and we had to learn Cyrillic too. I’m actually surprised how much I can still remember. It’s about 39 years ago since I’ve learnt it and then never used it actually. Wow!
And, Srbsko-Hrvatski isn’t much different to Slovenian though so it’s easy to cross-understand and read (well it is to me for sure).
We spell it “Стелла”
Thanks for reminding me. A Russian band’s renditions of two folk songs were my first encounter with the Welsh language ever.
I know the pronunciation is very approximate, but isn’t it wonderful that many Russian speakers have had the pleasure of listening to Welsh songs?
Tatjana (and Justin)
I am no language expert I’m afraid. It is obviously just a very intiguing area and I tend to read a lot around the subject. I have read that there isn’t a single Slavic word that can be directly attributed to a Celtic connection, but academics are looking at this. I have also read that there are shared connections based on indo-european rooots, which is not surprising. Some Slavic words will be infliuenced by Celtic influence on the Indo European and for Blacksmith - the proto-celtic is goban (along the lines of Owain’s comment) - this then became linked to a gallo-roman god - gobannus or gobannos - (patron of the smiths). This link says a lot more on it:
Is the Slovenian Kovac linked (I can’t type the accent on the c - sorry) - maybe, but not because it came from an existing celtic source, but a very old shared Indo-European connection proto-celtic influence perhaps.
There is a bit of a debate on the Govan area of Glasgow and abergavenny on their etymologies, but place name etymology is usually controversial. I suspect words linked to this one could possibly throw up quite a few other weird and wonderful things perhaps. I’m not an expert by any means, so never take my word for anything - just throwing in ideas and things I have read. What does all this mean - probably nothing really, just interesting.
Yup, ‘goban’ is, as we both said, the word normally given as early Celtic. “Gofannon”, of course, occurs as a name in the Mabinogion, (Well, Culhwch and Olwen I believe!) normally thought of as being derived from the name of a god.
I’ve been searching a while, but I can’t find any reference to the PIE “gwobrhos” you mentioned- but then I have a limited number of sources on that, and almost no knowledge!
This is quite interesting. Mind you, I think we may well be in a very small group of people to call things like this interesting! 
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=M2aqp2n2mKkC&pg=PA619&lpg=PA619&dq=proto+indo+european+smith&source=bl&ots=POsbFZBc4P&sig=9M2g_VYcEBPcUGVK_x1-J3mRbEw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6q5uC_ZzLAhXBPRQKHZ4zDI0Q6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=proto%20indo%20european%20smith&f=false
If you are sad as me and you haven’t used this then, I think you might find this tool quite interesting:
http://indo-european.info/dictionary-translator/word/eng/smith
I spelt Ghwobros wrong - also IE not PIE !!!. The books link is very interesting.
also look at this and make what you will of it - ?
http://indo-european.info/indo-european-etymology.pdf - Page 82
or in summary:
Indo European: Gwhobros:
Celtic
Occidentalis: gobae <-bhṇts : (gobann <-ntsnos)
Orientalis: dat. pl. gobedbi : gof, pl. gofein
Slavic: Gabe: Gube ‘ignis’
Italic: Faber
Germanic:: Waepen: Waffen:, keren
Thanks very much for those links!
They seem very interesting.
I have to confess I’m not entirely sure what to make of them - they seem to be linked to an attempt to reconstruct Indo-European so it can be used as a modern language?
I’ll have to look into it further to be sure exactly what to make of it all, but I will enjoy doing that so thanks again for those links!
A new book has been published today (in Welsh) by a Russian academic Dr Alexander Falileyev Llawlyfr Hen Gymraeg (‘Old Welsh Handbook’).
http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/news/archive/2016/03/title-181263-en.html
It’s apparently an adapted and updated version of a book he published in Russian in 2002 on Old Welsh grammar. The Welsh version is available as a free e-book.
I thought I might be able to delay using a Russian keyboard for longer. Temporarily I found an online solution
http://winrus.com/keyboard.htm
It is a very practical solution and I also use the Google Translate keyboard, which I find very easy to access and use. When you say you want to translate from Russian to English, Google Translate then provides you with an on-line keyboard.
There is another more lasting solution which is to have your own Cyrillic keyboard or put Cyrillic stickers on your keyboard and “set up” your computer to input in Cyrillic. At the moment this is a step too far for me and I am happily functional with my temporary solutions. Hope this helps.
Justin
I know it’s not very SSi (at least for a beginner), but if anyone is interested in reading Russian, they might be interested in the parallel-text books posted here:
(all in the public domain).
There is a small catch in that they are in a special format (PBO) that you have to read with “Aglona Reader” which is a free download and very easy to install on Windows. (There is an Android version but I’ve never tried that).
I assume the translations to or from Russian will be good, as Yanis, the chap behind the Aglona project, is a Russian.
I don’t study Russian and have not looked at any of the Russian books myself.
I’ve previously used AR to make my own German-English parallel books, and am currently working on a Welsh-English one. It’s quite labour-intensive and time-consuming, although I think it’s worth the effort. By the time you finish, you know the book quite well…
I’m starting to read in Russian, so this is particularly helpful - thank you. The first book I am reading is “Three little pigs” which a friend gave me - and If Eirwen were her she might ask how can I be in the book and be reading it at the same time.
Justin