Learning Welsh

 Classes have been going for a month now, two hours a week and lots of bits of work on it in between. Each time we get to a new bit, I look at it and think, "I am never going to get my tongue round that lot, much less remember it!" but each time, I do.

But now, it's getting a little more complicated. Now we're getting to hear about mutations, about how certain words cause the initial letter of the word following it to change to something else - quite often too!

Nouns, it seems,  are even more sneaky - they have genders, just as in French, German, etc, but you can bet your life they won't be the same ones.

Today our tutor, Helen, just mentioned in passing that, for some unknown and unfathomable reason, 'table' is masculine in north Wales but feminine in the south.

Definitely an idiosyncratic language... and I'm really enjoying it.

Dw i wedi ymddeol ond dw i'n gweithio fel cynghores a dw i'n dysgu Cymraeg.

How about that, then?

Charles ? Perkins

Those of you who hang on my every word (OK, so no-one then) may recall my fruitless search for the birth certificate of my great grandfather, always known to me and to Dad as Charles Ernest Perkins and of his parents. Well, having discovered someone who is currently researching another member of the family, I have now been informed that, on his birth certificate, he is registered as Charles Frederick, which would explain why I couldn't find it! All the other details are exactly right, so it is definitely the same person.
To add to the confusion, however, his death certificate has him as Charles Ernest and, as his death was registered by his daughter, my grandmother, she too must have known him as Charles Ernest. On his marriage certificate, he is simply Charles. So it seems that he came into the world as Charles Frederick and departed as Charles Ernest.
As for his parents, by dint of many hours of dedicated research, I have discovered that Charles' father, John, may well have been married twice, having three children by his first wife and five, including Charles, by his second. Work continues on that. I have my nose to the ground and my magnifying glass to my eye...