The Bluestocking, a unique location for daughters and sisters of earth, frost, feathers, fur, scales and spines

'Merch' originally meant 'girl' and also 'daughter'. Later it expanded to mean 'woman', mainly in the North.

Originally in earlier Wesh 'gŵr' plural gwŷr' meant 'man' - cognate with Irish 'fear' plural 'fir', I believe. 'Woman' was 'gwraig' plural 'gwragedd'.

Modern official Welsh uses 'menyw' for 'woman', a South Wales Welsh word, from 'benyw', meaning 'female'. A bit like the development of the plural 'mná' when the singular is 'bean', I suppose.

Here in the northerly bit of Mid-Wales the only word for women I know (not Welsh-speaking but understand a bit) is 'merched'. I've never either heard or read 'menyw'. What does official Welsh used for 'man'?

As for the birds, I commented to DH only yesterday that suddenly the little birds are back. The only birds we've seen in the garden over the summer have been our blackbird couple plus at least one young male blackbird, an occasional robin and, up in the trees across the river, the local murder of crows. It's lovely to see the fluttering and hear the chirping from the trees again.

Same here, Not, I've only ever heard or used "merched" but most of my friends who are Welsh speakers are transplanted from North Wales (I assume because there are more jobs and more universities in "yn y Dde"). But, when I was taught Welsh decades ago, "gwraig" for "woman" was used. I suppose it's considered the equivalent of RP in Welsh??

Gŵr is the only word I've ever used for "man."

I haven't used Welsh regularly in a very long time, although I used to be quite good at it because of work and friends. I should go back to it, but I'm a bit too remote for classes, and I find that I don't learn well online. I need face-to-face. Another reason to move to the Big City!

'Dyn', plural 'dynion'. Which originally referred to the whole of humanity, as did 'man' and 'men' in English at one time.

There's also a North Wales word 'for 'woman', 'dynes' - basically 'man' with a feminine ending.

Official Welsh uses 'menyw' because laws etc. sometimes need to differentiate between adult women and minor girls.

There is another word for 'girl' which could have been used but which seems to have fallen out of favour, 'geneth'. (Fun fact, the related Gaulish word 'geneta' is recorded on a spindle whorl.)

Marie, I had an acquaintance once who was a native Welsh speaker, and she told me that Welsh is very close to Cornish and Breton, as they developed within the same group. She could even understand Breton well enough to not starve in Brittany.

The other group being Scots Gaelic (pronounced "Gallic"), Manx, and Gaelic (Irish) (these are the terms I was taught when I was learning Welsh- apologies if those aren't the correct terms!)

I suppose this makes sense, geographically.

Yes! Dyn! I'd forgotten that. I wonder if the Welsh I learned in the 80s would now be considered "quaint"? I would probably sound like an old woman. Which I am rapidly approaching... 😀

ps. never heard "geneth" - that's interesting

ok must go out or it'll be soup and more soup!

HAGADAPA!

I was distracted by house--y repair stuff [it's a rolling programme, resulting in rolling eyes🙄] so I didn't get all that in real time, Cher, which is a shame cos it's very interesting!

e.g. the similarities between 'gŵr'/gwŷr' and 'fear' 'fir'.
And the bean/mná equivalence with menyw/benyw is an eye-opener, I'll be bringing that to my next chat over a cuppa with chums who are also into languages, we're funny like that😃

'Dyn' looks like the Irish word for a person, duine [pron more or less 'dinna'], plural daoine ['deenee' ] , and also for humanity, so 'The Rights of Man' in Irish were always the rights of the person, cearta an duine.

You've got the Celtic languages family spot-on, Angle
I can understand a lot of 'Gallic' and Manx, esp when written down, but the Brythonic side of the family - zilch, I'm afraid, they are too different.
Apart from an enjoyable game of 'I Spy a Cognate Word', like we've just had.

It helps to know that for some bizarre reason, two different branches of Celts decided at a certain point to say either 'p' or 'k' at the beginning of the same word, the P Celts and the Q Celts.
[I'm assuming they had a referendum, and it was called Pexit. Or Qexit.😄]

The Welsh word gwyn can easily be spotted as the same as the Irish word finn [modern fionn] by swapping around the initial letters.
And pen is obviously the same as cen [modern ceann].

So pen-guin is obviously 'ceann fionn', fair-haired or white head in Irish.

But that's as easy as it gets, the two kinds of Celtic languages are far apart.

Fascinating, isn't it? I love all that stuff, and it's nice to have kindred minds in the Bluey💙

I might start learning Welsh, I have a smattering of vocab (enough to find things in the supermarket) but nothing more. I did Polish on Duolingo for a while before a conference there, which was interesting but I've forgotten it all again now.

I have been doing Welsh on duolingo, @Magpiecomplex - alongside German, Dutch and Latin - I focus on one language for a while, and at the moment, it’s Latin. I love seeing words that are clearly the root of English words. But I’m not sure being able to say that the weasel runs in the marketplace is going to be particularly useful in daily life! 😂

I thought Welsh on Duolingo was all about Owen & his parsnips, Woley!

I hope Boily knows enough to make sure that data stick of hers isn’t carrying anything dodgy.

I'm guessing that topographical names date back a very long way in any language, landscape being pretty fixed and unchanging. I can remember the little thrill I had on our only visit to Mull nearly 30 years ago when I realised that 'Gleann Mòr' (Glen More) had its direct equivalent in Welsh 'Glyn Mawr'. 'Beinn Mhor' could, at a stretch, even be translated as 'Pen Mawr.'

Isn't language fun? 😁

I think Beinn might be related to 'ban', meaning top, tip, point, summit, pinnacle, hill, mountain, etc. - basically anything high.

You get in Bannau Brycheiniog and Pen y Fan.

I didn’t realise we had so many Welsh Stockingers! I know no Welsh except bore da, courtesy of you guys, and cariad courtesy of my DSIL’s mum, who was from Pembrokeshire and lived there quite a long time. Coffee invitation extended to anyone who might be in reach of Conwy, though I know Wales well enough to understand the travel issues from one bit of it to another.

Our plan is to visit the castles at Conwy and Caernarfon, and the Blaenau Ffestiniog railway, which DH is interested in.

The narrow gauge railways from Caernarfon to Blaenau Ffestiniog via Porthmadog - the Welsh Highland and the Ffestiniog?

Very scenic, provided it's not pouring with rain. Blaenau Ffestiniog is to Wales as Manchester is to England - proverbially the wettest place. In fact, the wettest place is usually Capel Curig.

My favourite line in Welsh is Dwy'n hoffi coffi. I like coffee. NB Dwy'n means I am (literally I am liking coffee), but Dw i'n is usually taught because Dwy'n is feminine and it would be terrible to have the feminine as the default...

It's not a matter of feminine or masculine but a matter of orthography.

The full written version is Yr ydwyf i yn but no-one says that, so Dwy'n and Dw i'n are ways of representing the real-life pronunciation.

Dwy'n used to be used widely but Dw i'n is favoured nowadays, I believe because it shows the separate i element representing the personal pronoun.

It is pronounced 'koop-lah fuck-il' which means that saying that second part with impunity in respectable company is fun, in an immature sort of way😄

I'm afraid I could imagine me sniggering at that.

Welsh by adoption, not birth, Chickadee, having lived here for 52 years now. Sadly my days of driving further than locally are now in the past and Conwy is awkward to get to from here in any case. The only motorways/dual carriageways in Wales go from east to west across the north and the south of the country. Travelling from north to south, or indeed east to west across Mid-Wales, is still slow and tedious. Depending on the route taken (all these dratted hills and mountains in the way) Conwy is between 85 and 106 miles and the drive is nearly 2.5 hours each way. Sigh...

<wriggles into jeans>
<fights with zip and button>
<wins>
<can barely breathe>

My grasp of Welsh is Croeso Y Cymru, parcio, heddlu and poptiping (which I am never sure is a real word). My grasp of French and Latin is substantially better.

Like Magpie, I once tried Polish on Duolingo - I was working a lot with a Polish child. One day I felt very smug that I'd grasped the word for 'boy' (chłopiec) and could pronounce it and then realised that it was an infected language and I'd need to know chłopca as well.

At that point I gave up. And by that stage the Polish kid's English had come on in leaps and bounds ('Yeah, I don't like him, he is a quite a bully') so it didnt matter anyway.

I remember being stuck halfway along the Ffestiniog railway with a small child once. We'd visited in autumn and the tracks were so covered in slippery leaves the engine couldn't get traction at all. They had to send another engine up to give it some extra welly.

Woley, I need to get back to studying Latin. I get so much joy from the etymological references! (I am a Bluestocking nerd, yes I am) 😁