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- "Dych chi eisiau llaeth nawr?"
14 Comments
No, because there is not just one Northern and one Southern dialect, but quite a few more than that; and some people use "southern" words in the north or "northern" words in the south so it's not as clear-cut as that anyway.
The N/S thing is more of a tendency, rather than having a sharp dividing line above which you'll only hear northern forms and below which only southern ones.
That's interesting, and I agree that things like this are never clear cut, thank you! I live in North Wales and am told by the locals that certain words and grammar structures are consistently different from the 'southern' dialect. I don't think they're too offended when I use the 'wrong' word though :)
Well, as mizinamo says, it's not clear-cut. But from the point of view of someone living in the Northwest, I'd say Llefrith/Laeth = N/S, rŵan/nawr = N/S.
I'm not a Native-speaker so I'm a bit stumped by the Dach/Dych aspect because I assumed Dach was a kind of Eye Dialect thing as (at least where I live) unstressed vowels have a tendency to end up sounding like 'a', chwarel (quarry) becomes chwaral, capel (chapel) becomes capal, chwarae (play) becomes chwara. As I say, I assumed this was an Eye Dialect thing and not standard so not sure why it would be there. Like I would say isio instead of eisiau but I wouldn't expect to see it on a course because, as I understand it, it's Cofi dialect.
Having said that, a real Welsh person is probably about to say I'm talking absolute rubbish.
Also, I find Welsh people are just chuffed you're trying, even if you're using the wrong dialect or getting things a bit garbled.
Interesting. From speaking to people on here it seems there's no real Standard Welsh as there is Standard English so I think it's hard to draw the line on things like that. At any rate, a lot of the English used on these courses isn't really 'Standard' enough for me, let alone the Welsh.
isio is definitely used a lot around here (Anglesey) but I think I did read that it's Cofi but I may be misremembering.
PaCa826187, yes, sorry - wrote the above message quickly and meant to type 'literary'. Literary Welsh can differ greatly from the Welsh spoken on the street, and even the same idea can look like a different language when you put the two side-by-side; Duo teaches street Welsh - the Welsh you'll hear spoken between friends and on television programmes.
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I got this one as a question in my b&b in Porthmadog a couple of months ago - or rather the keeper's version of it: "Dach chi isio llefrith rŵan?" Not asking for a change, just giving the same line in some kind of northwestern version for those interested in dialects.