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fayrobertsuk · 1 year
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Mount Snowdon's name is officially changed after 5,000 sign petition - Mirror Online
I went on Google for something completely different, but this made me punch the air in jubilation, so you might be interested to see it too.
In case you're not familiar with the background, this is important because, despite rallying massively over the last 70 years or so, Welsh is still very much a language at risk. And when I say "at risk", I mean "subject to a campaign to drive it into extinction that very nearly worked and still might". Welsh speakers of my grandmother's generation and earlier were subjected to corporal punishment and shame tactics (see The Welsh Knot for one particularly notorious example), and workers to disciplinary action for speaking Welsh in school or workplace. In Wales.
And since tourism has been a huge source of income for the country (increasingly important, arguably, since so many coalmines and steelworks were shut down), using English placenames to be, I guess, less off-putting for visitors, has been increasingly the norm. Which means that the arguably far more beautiful (in Welsh or more directly translated into English) names are dying out, as locals forget them too.
One of the reasons I get quite passionate about this, is that I'm the last person in my family to speak Welsh much beyond the usual "good morning", "exit", and "welcome to Wales", and I'm a second language speaker at that, horrendously rusty. Another is, I guess, the guilt of the voluntary exile – what can I do but shout about it from far away and make occasional forays back to Duolingo's Welsh course?
Anyway, it's no longer Snowdon but Yr Wyddfa (Uhrr Wuthvah - th hard like though or that) and not Snowdonia but Eryri (Err-urree), emphasis always on the penultimate syllable (Yr WYTHfa, ErYri).
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skelwrites · 2 months
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b a s i c s skel // he / him // 25 queer // trans // celtic pagan canada (eastern time) // second-year creative writing student
w r i t i n g nonfiction // historical fiction // poetry ↪current WIP: a creative research project for school: a memoir about hiraeth and having a welsh family disconnected from their homeland
l a n g u a g e native: english 🇨🇦 currently studying: welsh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 previously studied: french 🇫🇷 & mandarin 🇹🇼
i n t e r e s t s cartoons, documentaries, video games, synthpop, indie folk, vocaloid, mythology, history, social justice
if there are any writeblr or langblr discord servers you think i'd make a good fit for, please don't hesitate to drop me a message or an ask. i'd love to join, as i'm much more active over there than i am on tumblr.
home // abt // nav // ask (anon off)
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flowerpotmage · 1 year
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does anyone have any recs for shows in welsh? im not a fan of like, detective dramas/crime procedural dramas (which is what google brings back and the recs I've gotten from my mom so far). kids shows are fine too, since i'm only learning
music recs also welcome! i like what i've heard of gwenno so far
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felilangblr · 9 months
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¡hola! this isn’t my first langblr account but i wanted a restart, so here i am!
main acc is @/lemon-boie if i follow
you can call me felis or winter! i am 23 and i live in wales. sadly a lesser welsh speaking part which is why i am trying to learn it more. though spanish is my priority currently
i am fluent in english as a first language, but i am about an A1/A2 in spanish and about a level 1/2 in welsh too
i wish i could learn more but learning languages is difficult to me, so i am trying everything possible, and hoping langblr gives me a motivation boost
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konckles · 1 year
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cnuasach foclóir :))
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yes it's another book post lol
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allinllachuteruteru · 5 months
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Duolingo is NOT what it used to be.
“Duolingo is ‘sunsetting the development of the Welsh course’ (and many others)”.
I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. It used to be about genuinely learning languages and preserving endangered ones. It used to have a vibrant community and forum where users were listened to. It used to have volunteers that dedicated countless hours and even years to making the best courses they could while also trying to explain extremely nuanced and complex grammar in simple terms.
In the past two years it feels like Von Ahn let the money talk instead of focusing on the original goal.
No one truly had a humongous problem with the subscription tier for SuperDuolingo. We understood it: if you can afford to pay, help keep Duolingo free for those who couldn’t.
It started when the company went public. Volunteers were leaving courses they created because they warned of differing longterm goals compared to Duolingo’s as a company; not long after it was announced that the incubator (how volunteers were able to make courses in the first place) would be shut down. A year goes by and the forums—the voice of the users and the way people were able to share tips and explanations—is discontinued. A year or two later, Duolingo gets a completely new makeover—the Tree is gone and you don’t control what lesson you start with. With the disappearance of the Tree, all grammar notes and explanations for courses not in the Big 8 (consisting of the courses made before the incubator like Spanish/French/German/etc. and of the most popular courses like Japanese/Korean/Chinese/etc.) are removed with it. Were you learning Vietnamese and have no idea how honorifics work without the grammar notes? Shit outta luck bud. Were you learning Polish and have absolutely no clue how one of the declensions newly thrown at you functions? Suck it up. In a Reddit AMA, Von Ahn claims that the new design resulted in more users utilizing the app/site. How he claims that statistic? By counting how many people log into their Duolingo account, as if an entire app renovation wouldn’t cause an uptick in numbers to even see what the fuck just happened to the courses.
Von Ahn announces next in a Reddit AMA that no more language courses will be added from what there already is available. His reasoning? No one uses the unpopular language courses — along with how Duolingo will now be doing upkeep with the courses already in place. And here I am, currently looking on the Duolingo website how there are 1.8 million active learners for Irish, 284 thousand active learners for Navajo, and even 934 thousand active learners for fucking High Valyrian. But yea, no one uses them. Not like the entire Navajo Nation population is 399k members or anything, or like 1.8 million people isn’t 36% of the entire population of Ireland or anything.
And now this. What happened to the upkeep of current courses? Oh, Von Ahn only meant the popular ones that already have infinite resources. Got it. Duolingo used to be a serious foundational resource for languages with little resources while also adding the relief of gamification.
It pisses me off. It really does. This was not what Duolingo started out as. And yea, maybe I shouldn’t get invested in a dingy little app. But as someone who spent most of her adolescence immersed in language learning to the point where it was literally keeping me alive at one point, to the point where languages felt like my only friend as a tween, and to the point where friendships on the Duolingo forums with likeminded individuals my age and other enthusiasts who even sent me books in other languages for free because they wanted people to learn it, the evolution of Duolingo hits a bitter nerve within me.
~End rant.
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daianotherday · 3 months
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Would be a real shame if people changed their name on Duolingo and then climbed up the league table before deleting the app.
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Just a thought.
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llyfrenfys · 11 months
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Welsh Gender Neutral Family Terms
We've come up with some gender neutral Welsh family terms in the LGBTQIA+ Welsh discord I run (dm for link) lately and so far people seem to like the terms. So, this is an introduction to some of the terms we've come up with so far.
I plan to make polls eventually with these terms and any other suggestions you might have and run a little tournament to see which terms are favoured most by Welsh speaking LGBTQIA+ people.
Without further ado, here are the terms:
(f. = feminine grammatical gender, m. = masculine grammatical gender)
Chwaed(ion) f. - Sibling(s)
[‘chwaer’ (sister) + ‘brawd’ (brother). Rhymes with ‘gwaed’ (blood), reminiscent of family ties]
Chwaerydd m. - Sibling
['chwaer' + '-ydd' (masculine suffix) ]
Chwaed fy mam / fy nhad - Aunt/Uncle (Literally, my mother’s/father’s sibling)
 [Literal translation (my mother’s / father’s sibling) ]
Naith f. - Niece/Nephew
[‘nith’ (niece) + ‘nai’ (nephew) ]
Dain (Deiniau) f. - Grandparent(s)
[‘taid’ (grandfather)+ t > d + ‘nain’ (grandmother) ]
Nam-gu f.- (Grandparent)
['fy nhad-cu' + 'fy mam-gu']
Of course, these are only suggestions. So far, chwaed has been very popular and dain has been preferred over nam-gu because it's less South Walian. But I'm interested to hear what you think or hear if you have any suggestions of your own!
Please share this post so we can get a larger sample size. Diolch!
NB:
These terms have come from multiple users, so bear that in mind with feedback. I can pass on suggestions to the users who coined them.
Grammatical gender is unavoidable in Welsh, but grammatical gender does not necessarily equal gender gender. E.g. the German word for girl 'maedchen' is grammatically neutral. In addition to this, certain suffixes in Welsh are gendered, which affects how words behave in certain sentences.
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smallpileoftwigs · 2 months
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right i have a question for u bilingual lot,
i would really like to learn a language other than english and was hoping to get some possible advice, sort of like where to start, how to keep it fresh in my mind and not something i get bored of a couple weeks from now cause wah wah its too hard
if u guys have any tips please let me know ! im most interested in learning a language like scottish gaelic or welsh, but also i am a classics student and think itd be really cool to learn greek or latin, ofc i'm aware these may be difficult languages to start with so im honestly open to anything !
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finnlongman · 1 year
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Protip: if you're feeling discouraged about the amount of progress you've made learning a language, start learning a different language and realise you've actually come a lot further than you thought.
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tobacconist · 4 months
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Welsh Duolingo only teaching the essentials I see
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lumeke · 10 months
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just learned the estonian word for welsh is kõmri, taken from cymraeg, the welsh word for their own language
it is very sweet brought tears to my eyes!
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gwendolynlerman · 1 year
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Languages with the most sounds
Languages have different phonetic inventories. Some languages use more sounds than others. Two sounds are different if they are perceived to constitute two distinct phonemes by native speakers. 
Here is a ranking of the most common languages by the number of sounds (phonemes) they use. Diphthongs are not considered because they are merely a combination of vowels that already exist in a language.
Lithuanian: 12 vowels and 47 consonants = 59 sounds
Danish: 32 vowels and 20 consonants = 52 sounds
Hindustani: 11 vowels and 37 consonants = 48 sounds
Welsh: 14 vowels and 31 consonants = 45 sounds
German: 20 vowels and 25 consonants = 45 sounds
Belarusian: 6 vowels and 39 consonants = 45 sounds
Norwegian: 19 vowels and 25 consonants = 44 sounds
Irish: 11 vowels and 33 consonants = 44 sounds
Bulgarian: 8 vowels and 36 consonants = 44 sounds
Hungarian: 14 vowels and 27 consonants = 41 sounds
Ukrainian: 6 vowels and 34 consonants = 40 sounds
Russian: 6 vowels and 34 consonants = 40 sounds
Slovak: 10 vowels and 29 consonants = 39 sounds
Latvian: 12 vowels and 27 consonants = 39 sounds
French: 17 vowels and 22 consonants = 39 sounds
Estonian: 9 vowels and 30 consonants = 39 sounds
Dutch: 16 vowels and 23 consonants = 39 sounds
Icelandic: 16 vowels and 22 consonants = 38 sounds
Portuguese: 14 vowels and 23 consonants = 37 sounds
Polish: 6 vowels and 31 consonants = 37 sounds
Czech: 10 vowels and 27 consonants = 37 sounds
Albanian: 7 vowels and 30 consonants = 37 sounds
English: 12 vowels and 24 consonants = 36 sounds
Catalan: 8 vowels and 28 consonants = 36 sounds
Swedish: 17 vowels and 18 consonants = 35 sounds
Mandarin: 9 vowels and 26 consonants = 35 sounds
Finnish: 16 vowels and 18 consonants = 34 sounds
Arabic: 6 vowels and 28 consonants = 34 sounds
Hausa: 10 vowels and 24 consonants = 34 sounds
Esperanto: 5 vowels and 27 consonants = 32 sounds
Persian: 6 vowels and 26 consonants = 32 sounds
Turkish: 8 vowels and 23 consonants = 31 sounds
Serbo-Croatian: 5 vowels and 25 consonants = 30 sounds
Italian: 7 vowels and 23 consonants = 30 sounds
Basque: 6 vowels and consonants = 30 sounds
Romanian: 7 vowels and 22 consonants = 29 sounds
Galician: 7 vowels and 19 consonants = 26 sounds
Spanish: 5 vowels and 20 consonants = 25 sounds
Greek: 5 vowels and 18 consonants = 23 sounds
Japanese: 5 vowels and 17 consonants = 22 sounds
This is by no means a complete list and is also very Eurocentric, but the source only had information for these languages.
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Curious coincidence:
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Emyr - male name, means "a king", "a ruler";
🇸🇦 أمير [ʔaˈmiːr] - a male king, ruler, monarch, aristocrat, etc.;
These words aren't cognates or loanwords. "Emyr" came from Latin "imperium" (Latin "imperō" - PIE "*per-") and "amir" came from old Arabic "-m-r".
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elen-aranel · 1 year
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It upsets me that we have to use language to describe language
I feel like there should be another, higher thing
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