Cymraeg

[midori]

Dwi'n dysgu Cymraeg.

Beth dych chi'n feddwl am ddatganoli?

[roundbitsofplastic]

Craeso y cymru

...that's all I now, sorry.

[bocken]

Pam wyt ti'n dysgu cymraeg? (Hm, 'dwi'n methu cofio os mae dysgu yn rhywbeth mae athrawon yn wneud, neu y disgyblion?) Iesu Crist, mae fy ngeirfa wedi diflannu.

Does gen I dim meddylion am ddatganoli, mae'n ddrwg gen I.

[jayen_aitch]

Dwi ddim yn siarad Cymraeg

Sorry... I probably got that wrong too.

All I've got is a couple of disparate phrases I picked up while at uni in Aberystwyth and Cardiff.

My Nain was the last Welsh speaker in the family, but she died in April last year.

She came across as being very English, but if people ever gave her abuse for being English then they'd suddenly find themselves getting a tongue-lashing in fluent Welsh.

The way she presented herself as being so English was funny really because her ancestry was part Welsh and part Italian - as far as I know her Welsh side came from Ynys Môn (where she and my Taid eventually settled after years living, working and raising a family in Liverpool) and her father was an Italian pharmacist, but during the war they decided as a family to play down the Italian and all switched names to fit in better. She went from being Felecia Boggiano to Mary Fay Barry, and everyone called her Fay.

But that's a bit of a tangent from where I think this thread was meant to go.

[midori]

I don't really know much Welsh at all either, but funnily enough "Beth dych ch'in feddwl am ddatganoli?" was an example sentence in a textbook I used to have. When I went to Green Man festival this year I thought about walking around and asking random people that, but then what if I did accidentally find someone who understood my bad Welsh? I'm not really prepared for a political conversation. I'd have had to hit them over the head and run away.

I did hear of a professor at my university who gave private Welsh lessons that would instruct his students to listen to Super Furry Animals.

[Trev]

I can speak a few phrases - but can write pratically nothing.

I did Welsh in school. Long forgotten, these days. My nephews can speak it better than I ever could, but they've been taught it from 5 upwards. Whereas I got 3 years between 11-14.

[bocken]

I learnt Welsh as a first language, although I didn't speak much of it outside school, and not even that much at school. There's hardly any left now, although by the time I'd finished typing that first post (with the help of geiriadur.net) bits were coming back, although I was occasionally trying to fit French/German/Swedish words in. I think I'm better at understanding it if it's written down than if someone's talking to me.