"Mae hi'n bwrw glaw."
Translation:It is raining.
17 Comments
1528
The introductory notes for this topic are a somewhat lacking!
So does 'glaw' mean rain and placing 'bwrw' in front make it 'raining'? If so, I would guess similar applies for 'bwrw eira'?
OK; a look at the dictionary app shows 'bwrw eira' just means snow. 'Brwr' means cast/hit/fling. So does 'bwrw eira' literally mean something like 'flinging snow', therefore snowing?
It also shows 'bwrw cerrig' means 'stone'. So is this stone as in to 'stone' someone, i.e. fling stones at someone?
I think this topic needs some re-working of the introductionary notes. :-(
Ironic that the both the words for rain and snow (and hail and sleet) would be left out of a Welsh course. :-) Were you got at by the Tourist Board? :-)
Bwrw glaw - raining
Bwrw eira - snowing
Bwrw eirlaw - sleeting (eira + glaw)
Bwrw cesair/cenllysg - hailing
Bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn - raining cats and dogs
Bwrw cyllyll a ffyrc - raining cats and dogs
Bwrw glaw mân - drizzling
Bwrw'n drwm - coming down hard
Arllwys i lawr; pistyllio i lawr - chucking it/pouring down
Look up bwrw in gweiadur.com for many other bwrw idioms not to do with the weather - a very useful word.
Bwrw/taflu cerrig at rywun - to stone someone
- 1528
That's brilliant! Thanks.
According to GPC (http://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html), the literal meaning of 'bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn' is 'to rain old women and sticks'! Meanwhile 'bwrw cyllyll a ffyrc(s)' means literally 'to rain knives and forks'.
A search of GPC for 'rain cats and dogs' also reveals 'arllwys y glaw: to pour with rain, rain cats and dogs, pelt down'.
For the non-British audience, you will probably already have gathered that 'raining cats and dogs' means to rain very heavily. An alternative expression is 'to rain stair rods', which I think may be mainly northern English - I'd never heard it before I went to Uni. 'Bucketing (it) down' is an alternative southern English expression.
In the UK it is natural to have many expressions for rain, especially heavy rain.
I think that 'old ladies with sticks' turn up in other places in Europe, too, pan fydd hi'n arllwys i lawr. Dutch, perhaps?
- 1528
I'm curious... Would Americans be familiar with the expression 'to pelt down'?
The word for "Rain" is "Glaw" and the word for "Snow" is eira. As you said placing "bwrw" before it makes it "Raining" and "Snowing".
- 1193
What is the literal meaning of 'bwrw' by itself? Is it a verb/ verb-noun? Can it stand alone or does it only occur in phrases like ibisc listed?
Looking at http://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html?bwriaf , the basic meaning seems to be "to throw". (bwrw is the verb-noun form, bwriaf the first-person future form.)
ydys/ys is very rarely seen except as part of a few other words or expressions, and not many people would even know that that is the case nowadays.
I am typing in the correct translation of 'mae hi'n bwrw glaw' . 'It is raining' and being told it's incorrect. I've tried over and over and the same thing occurs! What's wrong with you Duo Lingo? I'm logging out now as I'm getting Nowhere!!
The entries in the database are correct, so your answer should be accepted - I have checked that with our test facility. But:
- If you are using the app, check that you have the latest version - there are frequent updates and bug fixes.
- Check that you are using a capital 'i' for 'It...' - it should make no difference to Duo accepting the answers, but it seems to have got fussy about capitals recently.
Duo has been undergoing some significant software re-writes recently, apparently, so it may be that some software bugs are still to be tracked down.
If you look around the app or the website there may be a means of giving feedback on faults direct to Duo - that sort of thing is not in the power of the course team to fix, I am afraid.
