What was the first thing you saw in Welsh.?

Visually has to be a street name or a house name for me - Heol Pant Gwyn, Aelfryn, Argoed Isaf.

First memory of seeing a word on TV may have been Teliffant.

First things I heard were probably things like, dere mlaen, iste lawr, cer o mas, cau dy geg, lan lofft or cysg (for sleep in your eye).

1975 we had just bought our first car after living in Wales for about a year. We were travelling on a new stretch of road near Neath and I saw a sign that said 1 milltir to the next layby. I remember saying to my husband that it must be something like Italian for any lorry drivers going that way!!! What a numpty!! It was sometime later that the realisation came to me! Before that I had not really taken much notice of the Welsh on any signs. And our house was called Tawelfan! But it didn’t register in my monoglot brain!

4 Likes

Fortunately, I didn’t first encounter “milltir” while driving, but probably in a dictionary, so I learned the meaning along with the word.

If I’d first encountered it while driving, I may have (obviously incorrectly!) misinterpreted it as 1,000 miles! (or perhaps 1,000 kilometers).

1 Like

I’ve got a full size Bwni Binc from Ffalabalam! :smiley:

2 Likes

It sounds strange but I just found out that the original Milltir was the Welsh mile, equivalent 9000 paces or about 4.8 modern miles. Also there was a unique Welsh system of measurement units.

4 Likes

Seeing the “Croeso i Gymru” roadsigns whenever we crossed the border on our frequent family trips from Brum to Wales when I was a kid, and proudly informing everyone in the car that “Crowsow Eye Jimroo” is Welsh for “Welcome to Wales”.

3 Likes

I was probably too young to remember as I grew up in non-Welsh speaking Wales. It may just have been Mr Urdd, there were lots of pictures of him at Primary school.
Or do you mean ‘in Welsh’, which was probably a supermarket sign, it’s difficult to remember when I was first ‘in Welsh’ where I naturally read the Welsh first, such as "Caws / Cheese’, Or it would have been some sign in Caernarfon.
Sorry for rather a vague answer

2 Likes

When I was very young, going on holiday to Pen Llŷn, I always remember the signposts to “Llwybr Cyhoeddus”. I soon learned that this was not the name of a destination, but actually meant “Public (Foot)path”. My late Dad (bendith arno), despite not generally speaking Welsh, had been evacuated on a Welsh-speaking farm during the Second World War, and retained a good “rapport” with the Welsh language, even if he did not speak it. I suspect he may have retained a lot more ability than he ever admitted to. At least he and Mum taught me to respect the language and my Welsh roots - and to say “LL” :slight_smile:

But my Llwybr to Y Gymraeg has been rather long, winding and Preifat over the years - though I am happy to say it is all nicely Cyhoeddus these days. Thanks to SSiW and to my patient companions at Y Saith Seren, Wrecsam and Halcyon Quest, Prestatyn and others too numerous to mention, my llwybr has brought me to the happy point of being able to say out loud that I am now a Welsh Speaker - and now leads forward to a life lived predominantly in Welsh as I am about to move to a lovely spot only 3 miles from Caernarfon :slight_smile:

5 Likes

Well, to be fair, the Brum accent is almost as attractive (to my ears anyway) as the Welsh accent. :slight_smile:

1 Like

How could I also forget our primary school teacher!

He couldn’t speak Welsh, he told us as much - but still persisted in trying to teach us the basic colours when I was 8 or 9.

The line that sticks with me to this day…

“Red is COKE (He actually used to say it was just the word COKE, not COCH, but COKE. And this is easy to remember because what colour is a can of COKE? Red, that’s right”

His other slightly less convincing one was…

“Blue is GLAS. This is easy to remember because glass is blue”

…and this Ladies and Gents is why I left school with no Welsh skills :smiley:

11 Likes

I thought of a smart reply, a propos the teacher, involving plays on the word coke and coch, but thought better of it, since this is a family show. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Ha ha, Nicky. When I suggested this topic I was worried that it might be a bit of a dry subject, but fair play to you. You’ve really brought it alive. :slight_smile:

At a push, I can sort of see the blue glass thing, but only because we had some really old windows, which had an unintentional tint.

However, I’m struggling with the red Coke. I’m going to need to visualise some of that weird cherry Coke for that to work. :smiley:

2 Likes

Well the problem for.me is that I’ve only ever really drunk Diet Coke… So for me coke was always silver :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I remember a (rare) fascinating programme on S4C a good few years ago now, where they went to visit (mainly) Liverpudlians who had been evacuated to N Wales in their small years and acquired native fluency in the language by the time they went home. These people had never used Welsh since (not at home anyway!), but their fluency was unimpaired by the intervening years. When speaking English, they sounded like Scousers, but then could switch to perfect gog-Welsh! :slight_smile:

4 Likes
4 Likes

Very interesting. And I like his choice of dictionary too…

5 Likes
3 Likes

That explains the dictionary then. The description of the dictionary (of which I’m pleased to say that I have a copy, with the modern front cover) says:

Native Welsh speakers will also find the Modern Welsh Dictionary a useful resource in clarifying questions of vocabulary, grammar and usage.

4 Likes

Yeah - that’ll teach 'em! :wink:

4 Likes

The word ‘Perygl’ (Danger) on a road sign somewhere near Corwen.

The second word I saw and learned, sadly, was ‘Cofiwch’ in the ‘Cofiwch Dreweren’ graffiti. I was nine, and it was then that I learned, despite what I’d been taught, that we were a different country.

2 Likes