Today I was looking for podcasts about language and linguistics in various languages, and found an interesting one in Welsh – Hacio’r Iaith (Hacking Language).

The episode I listened to today included the word infestigeiddio (to investigate), which is an interesting example of an English noun that has been made into a Welsh verb. I haven’t seen this word written anywhere – it didn’t appear anywhere online, as far as I can discover, but does now. It is used in the following context:

Mae rhaid i ni rhoi i’r awdurdodau pŵer i infestigeiddio beth sy’n digwydd gyda data, gyda rhifau, gyda metrics hysbysebi, er enghraifft.

This means “We need to give the authorities power to investigate what is happening with data, with figures, with advertising metrics, for example.” It’s part of a discussion about social media sites like Facebook and the data they collect about their users.

There are a few other ways to say investigate in Welsh: ymchwilio, archwilio, astudio, gwneud ymchwiliad, gwneud ymholiad. The common root for most of these is chwilio [ˈχwɪljɔ] (to search, look for, examine, find) [source].

With some words you can just add io to make it a Welsh verb. With others, like investigate, the spelling needs some tweaking as well.

Other similar examples include licio (to like), parcio (to park), pacio (to pack), hwfro (to hoover / vacuum), and smwddio (to iron – from smooth).

Can you recommend interesting podcasts, especially about language and lingusitics, in other languages?