Ancestors

Written by merlin / alex glow on 2025-01-05 at 20:47

I've been picking up some Welsh on Duolingo (likely inspired by @suearcher ), and it is a DELIGHT! Here are some cool things I've noticed so far.

(This is in spite of the app's awful AI rollout, which is straight-up wrong at times... but that's a topic for another day 😅)

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Toot

Written by merlin / alex glow on 2025-01-05 at 20:55

Once you learn the spelling conventions, lots of words are close cognates to English: ciwb (cube!), siaced (jacket), brecwast (breakfast), ysgol (school), afal (apple), Sbaen (Spain)...

Some are similar to archaic or uncommon English words! Ffrog (dress/frock), perthyn (belong/pertain), tafarn (bar/tavern), hosan (sock/hose)...

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Descendants

Written by merlin / alex glow on 2025-01-05 at 21:01

Some are close to other Romance languages: mêl (honey), eglwys (church), nos (night), yr Almaen (Germany)...

"Siop lyfrau" (bookshop) combines both English and Romance cognates!

The days of the week are generally pretty Romantic (dydd Llun/Mawrth/Mercher...) – except Saturday (dydd Sadwrn).

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Written by merlin / alex glow on 2025-01-05 at 21:10

I'm finding it pretty approachable as a multilingual native English speaker. So far (so far!!), there don't seem to be a lot of suffixes to juggle for conjugation, adjectives, or possessives.

That said, there's a hard/soft duality at some word boundaries, which will take me a minute to fully grok (coch/choch, wyn/gwyn, tafarn/dafarn...). Should probably just look it up!

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Written by merlin / alex glow on 2025-01-05 at 21:12

Anyway, it's a lovely language, with a lilting quality that makes me replay some of the longer sentences just to hear them again.

And you can clearly see some places where Tolkien took inspiration for Elvish! My little high-school heart is happy :D

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Written by ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ on 2025-01-05 at 21:01

@alexglow And unlike English, the spelling is consistent, so you don't have to learn two separate languages, one for speaking and one for writing.

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Written by merlin / alex glow on 2025-01-05 at 21:15

@deshipu YES OMG. I went hard on French for like a year and a half and it INFURIATED me!! But of course English is even worse, hahahaaaa

Gave me an even higher appreciation for people who learn this language. Truly unfortunate that it's so dominant 🫠

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Written by ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ on 2025-01-05 at 21:27

@alexglow And you can blame the French for the Great Vowel Shift in English too, whether it was inspired by it or in rebelion to it.

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Written by Saguaro Lynx on 2025-01-05 at 23:02

@alexglow @deshipu

Fun fact:

American English Desk Dictionaries (printed) have a pronunciation guide in the front.

As I recall, the sound of a "long A" has ~10 different spellings. Here are a few:

"weight"

"wait"

"bate"

"gaol"

etc.

If I recall correctly, several other vowel sounds have multiple spelling as well.

It's no wonder many U.S. high schools require 4 units to graduate!

8- )

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Written by ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ on 2025-01-05 at 23:11

@SaguaroLynx @alexglow And that still doesn't prepare you for Worcestershire.

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Written by 🌈☔🌦️🍄 on 2025-01-05 at 21:49

@alexglow Reminds me of Irish, which I don't speak, but I found irish names relatively easy to remember.

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