Category: Welsh (Cymraeg)

Mynd i’r afael

By Simon

Mynd i’r afael is a Welsh expression I’ve noticed quite a bit recently on Radio Cymru, and from the context in which it is used, I think it means something like “to try hard to deal with something”.

Here are some examples:

Angen i Brifysgol Cymru fynd i’r afael â dilysu canolfannau newydd, medd y Gweinidog Addysg, Leighton Andrews.
The University of Wales needs to address the validation of the new centres, said the Education Minister, Leighton Andrews.

[Source: BBC Newyddion]

Mae ‘na lawer o gymorth a chefnogaeth ar gael i bobl sy’n poeni am droseddu ac i’r rhai sydd am helpu i fynd i’r afael â throseddu.
Plenty of help and support is available to people who are worried about crime and those who want to help tackle crime.

[Source: www.direct.gov.uk]

NB. In both these examples mynd has mutated to fynd.

From these examples it seems that mynd i’r afael, which literally means “go to the grip/grasp/handle/hold”, means “tackle” “address” or perhaps “get a grip on”. Google translate gives “(to) address” for this term, as does the BBC Welsh dictionary. I got the impression from the context that quite a bit of effort was involved, but perhaps this is not always the case.

These days I tend to learn new words and expressions in Welsh, and in my other fluent languages, through extensive listening and reading. If I notice a word or phrase that crops up frequently, I’ll try and work out its meaning(s) from the context, and sometimes it takes a while to hone in on exact meaning(s). When I learn things in this way I tend to remember better than if I just look them up in a dictionary, though I do remember dictionary words if I use them quite a bit after looking them up.

How do you learn new vocabulary?

Summer chicks and glowing coals

By Simon

Butterfly

Last night we were talking about the Pili Palas on Anglesey, a butterfly centre, which also has birds, snakes and other exotic creatures. The name is a pun combining pili-pala (butterfly) and palas (palace) – it took me ages to realise this. We were trying to think of the words for butterfly in various other languages and came up with the French, papillon, and the Spanish mariposa, but got stuck after that. This got me wondering why these words are so different in different languages.

The English word butterfly comes from the Old English buttorfleoge, perhaps from bēatan (to beat) and flēoge (fly), or perhaps it was the name just for yellow butterflies, and/or because butterflies were thought to eat butter and milk.

In Middle High German butterflies were known as molkendiep (“milk-thief”) and in Low German a butterfly is a Botterlicker (“butter-licker”) [source]. In Modern German Schmetterling /ˈʃmɛtɐlɪŋ/ is the word for butterfly – from Schmetten (cream) – from the Czech smetana (cream). This is based on the folk belief that witches transformed themselves into butterflies to steal cream and milk [source].

Welsh words for butterfly include iâr fach yr haf (“summer chick”), glöyn byw (“living coal”), pila-pala and bili-balo.

Like iâr fach yr haf in Welsh, butterflies are known as “summer birds” in Norwegian, sommerfugl, and in Yiddish, zomerfeygele.

In Irish the word for butterfly is féileacán, possible from the Old Irish etelachán (little flying creature / butterfly), from etelach (flying) [source]. The Manx butterfly, foillycan, comes from the same root, but in Scottish Gaelic butterflies are seilleann-dé (“God’s bee”) and dealan-dè (“God’s lightening”).

The French word for butterfly, papillon, comes from the Latin pāpiliō (butterfly, moth) – of unknown origin, and also the root of the English word pavilion (via Old French) [source]. The Italian farfalla (butterfly) comes from the same source.

The Spanish word for butterfly, mariposa, apparently comes from the expression Mari, posa(te (Mary, alight!), which features in children’s songs and games, or from la Santa Maria posa (the Virgin Mary alights/rests). Other theories about the etymology of this word.

There is more discussion of words for butterfly in various languages on AllExperts, and there are words for butterfly in many more languages here.

Cnaipí & cripio

By Simon

A story I heard when I was in Ireland featured two characters playing na cnaipí (tiddlywinks) /nə kripiː/ in a graveyard at night. A man who overheard them sharing out the tiddlywinks, saying over and over “one for me and one for you”, and thought they were the devil and god sharing out souls.

When I first heard the story I didn’t know what na cnaipí were, but later disovered that they are buttons or tiddlywinks. The singular of the word is cnaipe /kripə/ or /knapə/* and it means button, knob, key or dot, and can refer to buttons on clothes and to buttons (and keys and knobs) on keyboards and other electronic software and hardware.

* in some dialects of Irish, such as in Ulster and Connemara, cn is pronounced /kr/ while in others it’s pronounced /kn/

Today I discovered some similar-sounding Welsh words, cripio (to scratch) and cripiad (scratch), and wondered if they were related to the Irish cnaipe.

According to Dennis King, cnaipe comes from the Middle Irish cnap, from the Old Norse knappr (button, knob), from the Germanic *kn-a-pp-, from the Indo-European root *gen- (to compress into a ball), which is also the root of the English words knob and knoll, and the Scottish Gaelic word cnap (knob, lump, hillock).

As far as I can discover, there is no link between cnaipe and cripio – their resemblance is a chance one, something you find quite often when comparing languages.

Germania

By Simon

In an excellent radio adaptation of Lindsey Davis’ novel, The Iron Hand of Mars, that I listened to today, some of the action takes place in Germania Magna, the area of Germania east of the Rhine that at the time (72 AD) was not part of the Roman Empire. At that time many different tribes lived there speaking Germanic, Celtic, Scythian, Baltic and Slavic languages, or ancestors of those languages. In the radio version of the story the Germanic people encountered in Germania Magna, or Free Germany, speak Welsh – an interesting use of a modern language to stand in for an ancient one. There were Celtic tribes in that region at that time, but the languages they spoke probably weren’t quite like modern Welsh.

Germania, or De Origine et situ Germanorum, by Cornelius Tacitus, which was written in 98 AD, provides more information about that region in the first century AD. He mentions a number of languages, including that of the Aestii, “who have the religion and general customs of the Suebi, but a language approximating to the British.” and who dwelled on the “right shore of the Suebian sea”. However, according to this source, the Aestii were probably Balts, ancestors of the Lithuanians, Latvians and Prussians and spoke a Baltic language.

Have you come across other examples of modern languages standing for ancient ones in this way?

Panceltic concert

By Simon

Last night I went to a great concert in St John’s (Balley Keeill Eoin) at which all the modern Celtic languages were sung and/or spoken, as well as English and French. It was wonderful to hear them all, and I even understood odd bits of the Cornish and Breton, the only Celtic languages I haven’t got round to studying yet.

I think it was the first time I’ve heard Breton spoken and sung live – I have heard recordings before though. I thought that it sounds kind of similar to French, but when you listen closely you realise that it isn’t French at all.

I spoke to various people in Manx, English, Welsh, French and a bit of Irish, and joined in with songs in Manx and Scottish Gaelic at the session in Peel (Purt ny hInshey) after the concert.

An Irish group called Guidewires will be playing in Peel tonight, supported by a Manx group called Scammylt, and before that there’s a talk on Welsh poetry by Mererid Hopwood.

Tomorrow I’m off to Gleann Cholm Cille in Donegal for a week of Irish language and music at Oideas Gael’s Irish Language and Culture Summer School.

Come-all-ye

By Simon

Last night I went to a fascinating talk by Cass Meurig about the history of the crwth (a type of medieval bowed lyre) and its place in Welsh music and tradition, which included songs in Welsh.

After the talk there was a very enjoyable ‘Come-all-ye’ singing session lead by Clare Kilgallon and members of Cliogaree Twoaie (‘Northern Croakers’), a Ramsey-based choir who sing in Manx and English. There were songs in Manx, English, Welsh and Cornish, and I did a Scots lullaby (Hush, Hush, Time to be sleeping).

I think the phrase ‘come-all-ye’ refers to the type of songs known as “Come all ye’s”, which tend to begin with “Come all ye (sons of liberty/ good people/ tramps and hawkers etc) and listen to my song”. That’s according to Dick Gougan anyway. We didn’t actually sing any such songs last night though.

Bro

By Simon

Last night one of my friends was wondering about the meaning of the Welsh word bro, which appears in some Welsh placenames, such as Bro Morgannwg (the Vale of Glamorgan). So I thought I’d find out.

Bro /bro:/ is a Welsh word meaning “region, country, vale, lowland”. It is used mainly in place names, and appears in the expression bro a bryn (hill and dale), and in papurau bro (local Welsh language newspapers). It is also part of such words as brodir (region, country) and brodor (native), and in Y Fro Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Area) – the parts of Wales where Welsh is the majority language. It is a somewhat similar concept to the Gaeltachtaí in Ireland, though has no official recognition.

The same word exists in Cornish and Breton and has the same meaning. The Breton names for regions of Brittany all begin with Bro, for example Bro-Leon (Léon), Bro-Wened (Vannetais) and Bro-Gernev (Cornouauille), and England is Bro-Saoz (‘Land of the Saxons’), and Scotland is Bro-Skos or Skos in Breton.

Llygad yr haul

By Simon

I heard the Welsh phrase llygad yr haul (eye of the sun) on the weather forecast on Radio Cymru this morning and thought it was a poetic way of describing sunny weather. I think it appears in a sentence something like Bydd sawl mannau dan llygad yr haul yfory (“Many places will be under the sun’s eye tomorrow”).

In English you might talk about the eye of a storm, but I haven’t heard the expression the eye of the sun or the sun’s eye used in relation to the weather. Are there similar expressions in other languages?

Multilingual poetry

By Simon

On Sunday I attended an evening of multilingual poetry in Bangor that feature poets from Wales and India who read poems in Welsh, English, Bengali, Malayalam and Manipuri. It was part of a project to build links between Wales and India which involved the Welsh poets translating poems by the Indian poets into Welsh, and vice versa. They also translated their poems into English. A similar event will be taking place in Ultracomida in Aberystwyth tomorrow.

I could understand the poems in Welsh quite well, and while I didn’t understand any of the poems in the languages of India, it was fascinating just to hear these three very different languages, each of which belongs to a different language family – Bengali is Indo-Aryan, Malayalam is Dravidian and Manipuri is Tibeto-Burman. Unfortunately I didn’t get any recordings of them so I can’t share them with you.

Understanding poetry in foreign languages can be quite challenging, even if you speak them well. Poetic language can differ from every day language in various ways, but I find it worth the effort to try to read and appreciate poems in their original languages rather than just relying on translations.

Wedi 7

By Simon

Neithiwr roedd y Clwb Uke Bangor ar S4C ar y rhaglen Wedi 7 (tua diwedd y rhaglen) – ein ychychdig eiliadau o enwogrwydd! Ro’n innau ar y rhaglen yn siarad yn fyr yn Gymraeg efo Meinir Gwilym, y gohebydd crwydrol ar gyfer Gogledd Cymru, ac un o fy hoff cantorion Cymraeg.

Last night Bangor Uke Club was on the S4C programme Wedi 7 (towards the end of the programme) – our few moments of fame! I appeared briefly on the programme talking in Welsh with Meinir Gwilym, the roving reporter for North Wales, and one of my favourite Welsh singers.