Welsh TV Pobol y Cwm

Interested in learning Welsh so I’ve been watching Pobol y Cwm - People of the Valley, and I’ve noticed a few English words amongst Welsh such as ‘remote’, ‘please’, ‘taste buds’ and ‘lovely’ and after looking these are not in the welsh language, so are there certain English words which are used on a daily basis while speaking Welsh? Thanks!

Interested in learning Welsh so I’ve been watching Pobol y Cwm

While Pobol y Cwm is probably an excellent soap, I wouldn’t recommend it as an only or prime Welsh learning resource any more than Eastenders or Corrie for learning English.
In spoken Welsh we import English words as we do in English and, I suspect, most other languages. In my experience, the number of borrowed words varies with things like age and location and I suspect that Pobol y Cwm is trying to demonstrate that. My favourite example of using borrowed words in a soap is Del-boy in “Only Fools and Horses” parlong Fronsay

I see you have just joined and hope you enjoy using SSiW as a Welsh learning tool. I certainly have and Dw i’n siarad “tidy” nawr. :laughing:

Do continue watching P y C, by the way, there are a number of enthusiastic followers on this forum - just use the search facility to find “Pobol y Cwm”

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Yes that is true I watch both Corrie and EastEnders and thinking about it, they wouldn’t be the best for learning proper English haha.

Thanks that’s really helpful!

Seems Like a good soap storyline wise too.

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Yes, we have these in Welsh and they are in the dictionary!
remote = pell
please = os gwelwch yn dda
taste buds = blasbwyntiau
lovely = hyfryd

But as Huw said, it’s perfectly natural and normal for people to use English words in Welsh conversation - most commonly when it is a more technical word (tastebud) or when it’s a much shorter word (please), and others have just become ‘adopted’ (lovely - lyfli).

If you keep watching S4C, you’ll notice that in the less formal speech such as dialogues and guest chats there will often be the odd English word thrown in, whereas in more formal speech such as news and current affairs, there’ll be far, far, fewer, if at all. :slight_smile:

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Sorry when I said not in the welsh language I meant not spelt and pronounced the same way as in English. But yeah that does make sense. :grinning:

Here’s a rather extreme example from a different S4C programme where Gareth (“just a normal orang-utan from Caernarfon”) could be saying “Dwi wir wrth fy modd efo sglodion”, but rather more naturally comes out with…

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