Thanks Ben - I always learn something from your videos. And this one really helps in figuring out what to do about the different ways of saying the same thing.
Way back in the '60s a farmer in the Brechfa Forest (Eirwyn Jones Pwllcymbyd) told me that he was pleased that he'd been assessing a bsrk-stripping attachment on a tractor for the Forestry Commission with a farmer from North Wales. He'd been looking forward to working with another person for whom Welsh was their first language. The two men set to, both speaking Welsh as they had done every day of their lives. By midday they'd agreed to give up on that, and used English for the rest of the week because it was quicker for them - not to speak, but to understand. It was dangerous work, and they needed to be instantly aware of each others' meanings. Hill farmers can have strong local accents and idioms. He was a wonderful, tough, hard-working man who never let his loss of a leg be a handicap. He was a great raconteur and hunter too.
That’s why you need a literary/standard when you have an endangered language, so you can change a little bit the way you speak in order to be better understood whitout having to change to the dominant language, which in the case of endangered languages is a very bad thing.
@@BenLlywelyn They shouldn't do. These men were duly wary on the mountain, and Eirwyn had already lost a leg in a tractor accident. Many of the hill farmers there had lost a limb or an eye by their occupation - there was no such thing as a roll-cage. And anyway, Eirwyn thought it was hilarious - and it had made a good story for him to tell. For him, story-telling was a Welsh art - of which he was a consummate practitioner in Welsh and English. Your way of dealing with it is absolutely correct - not as two languages, but one very rich language, used in three ways. I'll bet that's a revelation to many people. It begs a question: Which form is most featured at eisteddfoddau?
@@BenLlywelyn I have a similar problem with my South Walian GP, who insists on speaking Welsh to me. I often leave his surgery none the wiser really of the true meaning of our consultation.
I remember a comedy series of the 70’s ‘Fo a Fe’ … With Ryan Davies,that poked fun at the Gog/ Hwntw divide. It was always Cymraeg though, and television was a great way of uniting the language.
I'd never heard of the etymology of eisiau before. I now recognise it as cognate to "esow" in Cornish although not used in the same way as eisiau is in Welsh. In Gerlyver Meur it is glossed as 'dearth, privation, shortage, want, need, penury'
I wish the British Language from Monmouth to Devon had survived. We would have such a wealth of dialects and a spectrum similar to what you see between Austria and Hamburg.
@@BenLlywelyn I started learning Cymraeg a while after I had started Cornish, I listed to the podcast Catchphrase which was good. After Cornish I could see that the different dialects of Welsh are still the same language, and not different languages, I suppose some people have grown up with the language as spoken in their millitir sgwar and anything different seems very different to them.
Use of gwneud (8:22) as a verbal auxiliary reminds me of German tut "do", conjunctive tät "would do", which is officially seen as bad German but is used all the time in at least some Southern dialects, e.g. "tust putzen?" i.e. "are you cleaning?".
I'm a not very fluent Gog so follow folks speaking "North Walian" better than someone speaking "South Walian". This is lack of familiarity with some of the more subtle differences. Great video as always, diolch yn fawr.
I'd never thought of that "s" turning into a "sh" in South Welsh, but there does seem to be a pattern, as evidenced by: pais -> paish (blouse) sir -> shir (shire/county) goglais -> coclish or goclish (tickle) cwts -> cwtsh (recess/hiding-place) clais -> claish (bruise) ... I'm sure (siwr -> shiwr) there are others.
Ben, What is Welsh? Is it the remnant of a type of society from the European Bronze Age? Or the remnant of a language from the British Bronze Age? Are Welsh a population more characteristic of the pan-British population before the arrival of Romans in Britain? Or are they an almost completely separate race of people from the English or Irish or Scots people who were always racially distinct from the rest of Britain? 0:02
Thank you for making this video Ben, it demonstrates how great the differences between North and South Walian Welsh can be. I still wish though, that "they" would teach South Walian Welsh in South Wales instead of trying to feed us a watered down, or modified version of North Walian Welsh, because school children and learners of Welsh will never sound like natural first language speakers unless they use the appropriate form of Welsh. You might think I am being pedantic here, but we have to take these things seriously, if we are to save the Welsh language.
Very informative. I too,feel that it could be wise to use both northern and southern words to draw slight differences. I would say that this could enrich the language going forward,rather than forcing one, or the whole populace to choose. Speaking of which, do you have an opinion on Carl Edward's proposal for adding letters to the Welsh alphabet to eliminate diagraphs?
I don't agree with Carl Edward's proposals. I do not think we should create entirely new letters which do not exist in any other alphabet. I think we should, however, take the Icelandic ð to replace double DD, try it out for a few decades and then see how it went before messing with anything else.
@@BenLlywelyn I kind of like Edward's letters myself. I would have to work with them a while to really get them to feel natural, they do need a little something. Let's not forget, that edh, in Icelandic, (originally from English), was also a creation, as was G, in early Latin. Edh,and Thorn could both be useful to Welsh, but I had assumed that we were steering clear of them because of their English origin. I don't know. I don't live in Wales, and don't speak enough Welsh to feel that I have a say. My general opinion regarding All languages is that they should have a distinctive (although not necessarily totally original), writing form that works well for the linguistic structure. I disagree with the Romanian migration from Cyrillic to Latin, in fact the intermediate stage which combined the two, I think was perfect, but at the same time, I am not Romanian, and do not live in Romania. I'm just a guy who enjoys languages and their written forms.
@@BenLlywelyn For "dd" you can take "z", and for "th" you can take "q". For "ff" you can take "v", and for "ch" you can take "x". Remove "Ph" from the alphabet. There are still "k" and "j". They can be used for "rh", "ng". "ll" looks quite normal and minimalistic. You can also figure out "i, y, u, w" - make i = i; shwa = a; north "u" and "y" = y; wovel "w" = u; w = w. /You can also replace "c" with "k", and "f" with "v" (but then do the opposite f = v, ff = f, rh = c, and not f = f, ff = v, rh = k)./ Only digraphs can be replaced, except for ll. For the southern dialect, you need to distinguish between the phoneme "ng" and two phonemes next to each other "n'g". But the approach of "making one letter and checking what happens", judging by the history of language reforms, is not just a failed method, but even fatal, since a linguistic split will occur in society and everything else will never be introduced, and as a result there will be two useless versions of the norm, which differ only by one letter. Therefore, everything needs to be introduced at once at the same time - there will be a big scandal, but it will be accepted after many decades, but at least there will not be the horror like in Norway, with 299 versions of the language, for each correction, where everyone quarrels with each other and protests for each edit. IMHO =)
What effect is the historically attested influx of ruling class refugees from Hen Ogledd regarded as having on middle and modern Welsh? If the language then was classed as a dialectic continuum with Rheged, the Cumbric numbers suggest considerable variation. For that matter, how consistent was the Celtic language in the sub-Roman South West before it was sundered following the Battle of Deorham?
It's a frustrating one. I started speaking Welsh when I was 4, but it's become very fragmented since I left secondary. Trying to relearn the language, I'm having to deal with relearning it through websites that teach SOUTH Welsh, which isn't particularly helpful where I'm from 😂
I assume there is no connection between Welsh Gog, and Gog and Magog? I read the entire Wikipedia article on Gog and Magog--fascinating, but no mention of Wales.
Gog & Magog are Hebrew, not Welsh. In Ezekiel 38, Gog is an individual and Magog is his land. By the time of the New Testament's Revelation 20 (Revelation 20:8), Jewish tradition had long since changed Ezekiel's "Gog from Magog" into "Gog and Magog".
It's often said of star-struck North Welsh people that they are all agog. But I think the greatest of all differences is the accent. I can't tell a Cardiff native from a Pembrokeshire, but if someone from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychllwerndrobwllllantyssiliogogogoch says Marbles in the Mouth, I know they're unlikely to have a flat in Ystradgynlais.
@@BenLlywelyn There was a radio spokesface, back n the day, on a Welsh local radio station who, I'm told, was a Cardiff native - I'm guessing more Splott than Llandaff, because he sounded more Stan Boardman than Wynford Vaughan-Thomas I used to live in Pembrokeshire, and the locals are more Touch of the Tar Brush than you mght imagine
I'm a gog. North Wales is definitely a different place to South Wales, and a lot of us want to break free from Cardiff rule. North and south Wales were two different tribes so it's not just a language issue. Obviously this video was about language. I'm sure a lot of gogs would agree that Cardiff looks after South Wales and We need a capital to look after North wales
@@BenLlywelyn Nothing to do with hate or anything like that - that is an extreme view point. Remember the three largest cities in North wales are in England. Liverpool was once the unofficial capital of North wales. All our roads lead to England. Its quicker to fly to New York than drive to Cardiff, and London is only 2.75 hours on the train. It's geology nothing else. Lots of us Gogs want our own capital. Even our accents are different. Even the voting patterns are different.
When you say you're learning Welsh... It's literary, Southern and Northern. Good luck. Still, with so many mutations and word changes is it not fair to say you are learning two different languages with linguistic heritage and commonalities?
As a Welsh person, our differences and mutations still make Finnish (suomea) look easy. I moved to Finland a few years ago and FML, I still can't speak it. It's similar to Welsh in ways despite having zero language family relationship. the Finnish I learn in school isn't recognisable in terms of the Finnish that's spoken since there is written Finnish and spoken Finnish. And people tend to not use written Finnish when the speak, so, I have no idea what's being said etc. You have to effectively learn another language to then understand Finn's. And that's not even brining to the table dialects etc. 😢
Diolch am y gwiddèo newydd Ben✌🏻, mi ailddysges i’r Gymræg yn annibynnol gan fy hun am 8 mlynedd ac dwi’n gallu ei siarad yn rhugl ‘nawr, dwi di gwylio dy widdèoedd di am gyfnod hefyd, cadw i fyny’r gwaith wych 👍🏻
Thanks Ben - I always learn something from your videos. And this one really helps in figuring out what to do about the different ways of saying the same thing.
Glad yoi enjoyed it!
*Broydd ~ Brodi / Brodeală* in Romanian ;)
With the meaning:
To resemble or match. - a brodi
Similarity or matching. - brodeală
Way back in the '60s a farmer in the Brechfa Forest (Eirwyn Jones Pwllcymbyd) told me that he was pleased that he'd been assessing a bsrk-stripping attachment on a tractor for the Forestry Commission with a farmer from North Wales. He'd been looking forward to working with another person for whom Welsh was their first language.
The two men set to, both speaking Welsh as they had done every day of their lives. By midday they'd agreed to give up on that, and used English for the rest of the week because it was quicker for them - not to speak, but to understand. It was dangerous work, and they needed to be instantly aware of each others' meanings. Hill farmers can have strong local accents and idioms.
He was a wonderful, tough, hard-working man who never let his loss of a leg be a handicap. He was a great raconteur and hunter too.
Stories like, of Welsh switching yo English to avoid dialect dofferences like that, leave me a bit sad frankly.
Cytuno diolch i'r cyfryngau a'r system addysg dyw straeon fel yr uchod ddim yn gyffredin iawn erbyn hyn
That’s why you need a literary/standard when you have an endangered language, so you can change a little bit the way you speak in order to be better understood whitout having to change to the dominant language, which in the case of endangered languages is a very bad thing.
@@BenLlywelyn They shouldn't do. These men were duly wary on the mountain, and Eirwyn had already lost a leg in a tractor accident. Many of the hill farmers there had lost a limb or an eye by their occupation - there was no such thing as a roll-cage. And anyway, Eirwyn thought it was hilarious - and it had made a good story for him to tell. For him, story-telling was a Welsh art - of which he was a consummate practitioner in Welsh and English.
Your way of dealing with it is absolutely correct - not as two languages, but one very rich language, used in three ways. I'll bet that's a revelation to many people. It begs a question:
Which form is most featured at eisteddfoddau?
@@BenLlywelyn I have a similar problem with my South Walian GP, who insists on speaking Welsh to me. I often leave his surgery none the wiser really of the true meaning of our consultation.
Great video Ben and very enlightening. It certainly helped me to understand some of the basic north/south differences. Diolch!
Diolch yn fawr iawn.
I remember a comedy series of the 70’s ‘Fo a Fe’ … With Ryan Davies,that poked fun at the Gog/ Hwntw divide. It was always Cymraeg though, and television was a great way of uniting the language.
A classic. Clasur!
Yes, please! Another video on prepositions and vocabulary! Diolch, Ben!
Really well explained. There are also variations between west and east, like 'sa'in gwbod' in the west instead of 'dwi ddim yn gwybod'.
That is a very good point.
Informative as ever. Diolch yn fawr Ben.👍👍
Excellent!
Big thanks to Ben for this videos. I'm writing an article about Celtic languages, so Ben's videos is a very good source of information.
Oh that is a fine thing. Thank you.
Any chance you could link the article once you're done? I'd be very much interested in reading it!
I'd never heard of the etymology of eisiau before. I now recognise it as cognate to "esow" in Cornish although not used in the same way as eisiau is in Welsh. In Gerlyver Meur it is glossed as 'dearth, privation, shortage, want, need, penury'
I wish the British Language from Monmouth to Devon had survived. We would have such a wealth of dialects and a spectrum similar to what you see between Austria and Hamburg.
@@BenLlywelyn I started learning Cymraeg a while after I had started Cornish, I listed to the podcast Catchphrase which was good. After Cornish I could see that the different dialects of Welsh are still the same language, and not different languages, I suppose some people have grown up with the language as spoken in their millitir sgwar and anything different seems very different to them.
Use of gwneud (8:22) as a verbal auxiliary reminds me of German tut "do", conjunctive tät "would do", which is officially seen as bad German but is used all the time in at least some Southern dialects, e.g. "tust putzen?" i.e. "are you cleaning?".
Fascinating that it is seen as bad German. It is clearly not seen as bad Welsh, but it is less formal.
I really enjoyed this as my family is in the South and my bestie is from the North.
Great! Diolch for watching.
South Cymraeg sometimes sounds like Scottish Gaelic “Ti moyn dishgled “ sounds like something off a Manran cd lol
A lot of Irish people went to Pembrokeshire in the 4th to 7th centuries.
Remember Ryan and Ronnie and their show Fo a Fe.
Un o'ch fideos gorau eto Ben. Swydd ardderchog. Diolch.
Caredig iawn. Diolch am wylio!
I'm a not very fluent Gog so follow folks speaking "North Walian" better than someone speaking "South Walian". This is lack of familiarity with some of the more subtle differences.
Great video as always, diolch yn fawr.
Thank you, hope it helped.
I'd never thought of that "s" turning into a "sh" in South Welsh, but there does seem to be a pattern, as evidenced by:
pais -> paish (blouse)
sir -> shir (shire/county)
goglais -> coclish or goclish (tickle)
cwts -> cwtsh (recess/hiding-place)
clais -> claish (bruise)
... I'm sure (siwr -> shiwr) there are others.
Cwtsh! Of course, should have thought of that.
Dishgled is from desgil, the welsh word for dish. (Dishgled / dish of)
Yn wir / Indeed
Cracks me up, the Gog and Taff thing, just like England
Thank you for watching.
Ben, What is Welsh? Is it the remnant of a type of society from the European Bronze Age? Or the remnant of a language from the British Bronze Age? Are Welsh a population more characteristic of the pan-British population before the arrival of Romans in Britain? Or are they an almost completely separate race of people from the English or Irish or Scots people who were always racially distinct from the rest of Britain? 0:02
Welsh is the fusion of British and Roman which was pushed back to the Western peninsulas by Germanic barbarians when Rome left.
Thank you for making this video Ben, it demonstrates how great the differences between North and South Walian Welsh can be. I still wish though, that "they" would teach South Walian Welsh in South Wales instead of trying to feed us a watered down, or modified version of North Walian Welsh, because school children and learners of Welsh will never sound like natural first language speakers unless they use the appropriate form of Welsh. You might think I am being pedantic here, but we have to take these things seriously, if we are to save the Welsh language.
It is natural to care about your local heritage and area. Not pendantic at all. Diolch yn fawr.
My 4the great grandfather was from North Wales, while his wife was from Aberystwyth in the South. No wonder they mostly spoke English!
Oh no!
Very informative. I too,feel that it could be wise to use both northern and southern words to draw slight differences. I would say that this could enrich the language going forward,rather than forcing one, or the whole populace to choose.
Speaking of which, do you have an opinion on Carl Edward's proposal for adding letters to the Welsh alphabet to eliminate diagraphs?
I don't agree with Carl Edward's proposals. I do not think we should create entirely new letters which do not exist in any other alphabet. I think we should, however, take the Icelandic ð to replace double DD, try it out for a few decades and then see how it went before messing with anything else.
@@BenLlywelyn
I kind of like Edward's letters myself.
I would have to work with them a while to really get them to feel natural, they do need a little something.
Let's not forget, that edh, in Icelandic, (originally from English), was also a creation, as was G, in early Latin.
Edh,and Thorn could both be useful to Welsh, but I had assumed that we were steering clear of them because of their English origin.
I don't know. I don't live in Wales, and don't speak enough Welsh to feel that I have a say.
My general opinion regarding All languages is that they should have a distinctive (although not necessarily totally original), writing form that works well for the linguistic structure.
I disagree with the Romanian migration from Cyrillic to Latin, in fact the intermediate stage which combined the two, I think was perfect, but at the same time, I am not Romanian, and do not live in Romania. I'm just a guy who enjoys languages and their written forms.
@@BenLlywelyn For "dd" you can take "z", and for "th" you can take "q".
For "ff" you can take "v", and for "ch" you can take "x".
Remove "Ph" from the alphabet.
There are still "k" and "j". They can be used for "rh", "ng".
"ll" looks quite normal and minimalistic.
You can also figure out "i, y, u, w" - make i = i; shwa = a; north "u" and "y" = y; wovel "w" = u; w = w.
/You can also replace "c" with "k", and "f" with "v" (but then do the opposite f = v, ff = f, rh = c, and not f = f, ff = v, rh = k)./
Only digraphs can be replaced, except for ll. For the southern dialect, you need to distinguish between the phoneme "ng" and two phonemes next to each other "n'g".
But the approach of "making one letter and checking what happens", judging by the history of language reforms, is not just a failed method, but even fatal, since a linguistic split will occur in society and everything else will never be introduced, and as a result there will be two useless versions of the norm, which differ only by one letter. Therefore, everything needs to be introduced at once at the same time - there will be a big scandal, but it will be accepted after many decades, but at least there will not be the horror like in Norway, with 299 versions of the language, for each correction, where everyone quarrels with each other and protests for each edit.
IMHO =)
@@BenLlywelyn
Ni farkiais vy jhas gar fabrig pink a'm diak kodi bau hyd llaun dur xueru ger tŷ Mabon ar zyz Maurq, ond parkiais ve meun lagun cadlyd
What effect is the historically attested influx of ruling class refugees from Hen Ogledd regarded as having on middle and modern Welsh? If the language then was classed as a dialectic continuum with Rheged, the Cumbric numbers suggest considerable variation.
For that matter, how consistent was the Celtic language in the sub-Roman South West before it was sundered following the Battle of Deorham?
It explains a lot about northern Welsh in my opinion.
It's a frustrating one. I started speaking Welsh when I was 4, but it's become very fragmented since I left secondary. Trying to relearn the language, I'm having to deal with relearning it through websites that teach SOUTH Welsh, which isn't particularly helpful where I'm from 😂
Dal ati! Keept at it!
I assume there is no connection between Welsh Gog, and Gog and Magog? I read the entire Wikipedia article on Gog and Magog--fascinating, but no mention of Wales.
No connection that I know of!
Gog & Magog are Hebrew, not Welsh. In Ezekiel 38, Gog is an individual and Magog is his land. By the time of the New Testament's Revelation 20 (Revelation 20:8), Jewish tradition had long since changed Ezekiel's "Gog from Magog" into "Gog and Magog".
There's also an Arabic variation in the Quran, but I don't know Arabic.
I read that natives either drop mae or shorten it to ma'
True
A bit like the difference between broad Geordie and broad Brummie - neither would have a clue what the other was saying.
As a South Wailian, I learned eisiau pronounced eye-sh-eye.
Many ways to.
Ardderchog! More of this for me at least ! Diolch yn fawr i chi !
Croeso!
Now is rwan in the north - it's the same word backwards in the south: nawr.
Which you do mention later on.
Like Tosk and Gheg in Albanian. TOSK has nasal vowels â ê î ô û ŷ
That would ne fascinating to look at.
@@BenLlywelyn lovely place
It's often said of star-struck North Welsh people that they are all agog. But I think the greatest of all differences is the accent. I can't tell a Cardiff native from a Pembrokeshire, but if someone from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychllwerndrobwllllantyssiliogogogoch says Marbles in the Mouth, I know they're unlikely to have a flat in Ystradgynlais.
Caerdydd accents, historically, are very distinctive.
@@BenLlywelyn There was a radio spokesface, back n the day, on a Welsh local radio station who, I'm told, was a Cardiff native - I'm guessing more Splott than Llandaff, because he sounded more Stan Boardman than Wynford Vaughan-Thomas I used to live in Pembrokeshire, and the locals are more Touch of the Tar Brush than you mght imagine
I see Allan in the South, I've never see Mas
Most of the translators come from the north.
You’ll see ‘allan’ written but in spoken S Walian Welsh it’s always ‘mas’. It comes from ‘maes’-field and Breton uses this too ‘er maez’
Diddorol - ond beth am yr un mawr …. ‘Sai’n gwbod’?
Yeah. Yn wir. Roedd 'Sa i'n siarad Gog' yn fy nodiadau, ond mae wedi dianc i rywle.
I'm a gog. North Wales is definitely a different place to South Wales, and a lot of us want to break free from Cardiff rule. North and south Wales were two different tribes so it's not just a language issue.
Obviously this video was about language.
I'm sure a lot of gogs would agree that Cardiff looks after South Wales and We need a capital to look after North wales
Don't let our haters divide us.
@@BenLlywelyn Nothing to do with hate or anything like that - that is an extreme view point. Remember the three largest cities in North wales are in England.
Liverpool was once the unofficial capital of North wales. All our roads lead to England. Its quicker to fly to New York than drive to Cardiff, and London is only 2.75 hours on the train.
It's geology nothing else. Lots of us Gogs want our own capital. Even our accents are different.
Even the voting patterns are
different.
So there is no Commonwelsh?
There is no RP Welsh.
Ware/Chwara teg am wneud y fideo ‘ma. Gwych.
Diolch am wylio.
Omg I'm dying 😂😂. Pembrokeshire Welsh all the way
North wales and South Wales not North and South Welsh Diolch yn fawr
When you say you're learning Welsh... It's literary, Southern and Northern. Good luck. Still, with so many mutations and word changes is it not fair to say you are learning two different languages with linguistic heritage and commonalities?
No. north and south Welsh are closer to each other than Austrian German and high German.
As a Welsh person, our differences and mutations still make Finnish (suomea) look easy. I moved to Finland a few years ago and FML, I still can't speak it. It's similar to Welsh in ways despite having zero language family relationship. the Finnish I learn in school isn't recognisable in terms of the Finnish that's spoken since there is written Finnish and spoken Finnish. And people tend to not use written Finnish when the speak, so, I have no idea what's being said etc. You have to effectively learn another language to then understand Finn's. And that's not even brining to the table dialects etc. 😢
Put a proper tô back on lettered
Everyone learns number in Welsh.
17:10 ho ho,ike Americans say something may, rather than something might.🤪
Hey hey :)
Diolch am y gwiddèo newydd Ben✌🏻, mi ailddysges i’r Gymræg yn annibynnol gan fy hun am 8 mlynedd ac dwi’n gallu ei siarad yn rhugl ‘nawr, dwi di gwylio dy widdèoedd di am gyfnod hefyd, cadw i fyny’r gwaith wych 👍🏻
Diolch yn fawr am ddod yn ôl. Mae dysgu iaith ar dy liwt dy hun yn gamp! Go dda.