Cymraeg again

On Wednesday, I was very brave. I went to a welsh conversation group at the local hostelry. One of the tutors runs it every Wednesday evening through the school holidays, so, as my tutor was going, I decided to go too. As it happened, I was the only 'first year' there. The others were fourth or sixth year, so well ahead of me, albeit very friendly and encouraging.
However, I did find myself doing my 'rabbit in the headlights' act quite a lot. This is because, whenever someone said something to me I had to:
  1. mentally translate what they had said
  2. decide what my answer would be
  3. translate said answer into welsh (vocabulary knowledge permitting)
  4. check that I had any mutations right
  5. if a 'yes' was needed, decide which  was the appropriate one. (welsh has quite a few).

On the plus side, listening to the general conversation, I did manage to understand/guess most of what was being said, so not all bad.
And I have agreed to go again next week.
Ever the glutton for punishment!

6 comments:

sh said...

Just how many words do the Welsh have for yes? I've mostly encountered 'no' as in 'can I get a drink on Sunday?' or 'can me and my girlfriend have a double room?' although this was some years ago.

Cro Magnon said...

Sounds like when I began to learn 'real' French, 40 years ago.

Jennytc said...

Quite a lot and I haven't met all of them yet, but for every 'yes' there is an accompanying 'no' And some change according to the subject of the sentence! :)

Jennytc said...

Probably very similar, Cro. ;)

ZACL said...

I found Latin based vocabulary relatively straightforward to accumulate, learning to structure it into speaking terms was a little more complex. There is more than one way of saying yes and no in these tongues. Other languages may be more of a challenge, including the Celtic ones, especially when you have to use a mutation of a perfectly good English language word to suit something modern that does not have a Celtic equivalent.

The Gaelic tongue uses English words where none other exists, (from what I have heard on TV programmes) with an accent, an accent that would exist anyway. Copying it would be interesting.

Jennytc said...

I think knowledge of Latin is a really good foundation for learning other 'romance' languages and, initially, that was a bit of a problem with welsh. Aside from a few words which have a French influence, there wasn't really anything to 'hang' this new vocabulary on. I am pleasantly surprised that I am learning and assimilating the vocabulary pretty easily. The 'borrowing' of english words is more widespread in the south than the north I think and I don't think it happens to the same extent with gaelic and gallic, although I could be wrong there.

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