So runs the river......

Welsh is, of course, one of the last remaining, living  languages that is part of the group of languages spoken throughout Europe by Celtic tribes thousands of years ago.

The Celtic names of rivers, mountains, regions, towns and cities are everywhere if you choose to look below the surface. For example Paris comes from the Celtic tribe Parisii living in that region, similarly Belgium marks the stamping ground of the Celtic Belgae tribes.

The language gives rise to numerous other names in use today. The name of one of Europe's most important rivers, the Rhone comes from Rodonos or Rotonos, literally "that which runs or rolls".

The original Celtic root `ret-' is still retained to the present day in the Welsh word `rhedeg' meaning, you've guessed it, `to run'. You probably use a variation of this yourself as it gave rise, via Latin, to  "rotate" and "to roll" in English.

Incidentally, for better or worse, I have heard that the Welsh also gave the world `the car' - `to carry' also being of Celtic origin!

It is also a poetic and noble language and It provides an unbroken thread of civilised literature  through the dark ages of Europe.

       The bard Taliesin, for example, in the first half of the 4th Century AD, describes the dead legions of English soldiers after a battle with the Cymry  to repel the insurgents thus:

If.. it was a primitive society which produced this work, it was also a cultured one. This is one of the great wonders of our history - that the Welsh language was the medium of such beauty and civility in such an uncivilised age; that a radiance streamed through it when the lights of Christian Europe had been extinguished. When Gaul and Spain and Italy were in the grip of the barbarians..; when the darkness over England was so profound that only a few fragments are known about its condition and its history; a generation before Mahomet fled to Medina: nearly a millennium before Columbus sailed for the West, this is when a superb and shimmering stream of Welsh literature began upon its course down fourteen hundred years........

Ali G in WALES

Ali G (alter ego of `Borat') goes to Wales to explore Welsh homeland security, 3 metre long squirrels found in coal mines and how to speak Welsh 

FOR ALI G - Click here/ Cliciwch yma

Welsh classes in Canberra - You are very welcome at our regular lessons in Cymraeg, which are held on Wednesdays at the Harmonie German Club, Narrabundah.

Click here/ Cliciwch yma

Adelaide Learners

Sign up for Facebook to connect with Grŵp sgwrsio Cymraeg Adelaide.

In Adelaide they have a small group ranging from basic learners to fluent first language speakers

GET IN TOUCH NOW!

Dysgu Cymraeg   

Learn Welsh

in Sydney

Click here/ Cliciwch yma

LEARN WELSH IN MELBOURNE

Tafod y Cymry

(Tongue of the Welsh) - Link to Melbourne Welsh classes website.

If you do want to learn how to pronounce this lovely name here's a nice way to do so - with the use of music

Why Wales? Pam Cymru (Why Cymru)?

The name of our country in Welsh is Cymru, but in English it is Wales.  There is an interesting background to each name.

Let’s begin with Wales.  The root of this name goes back to the word walh or wealh, which is ‘stranger’ in old German, the early language from which English and German developed.  Walh was the word given by Germanic people on the continent about 2000 years ago, for a person whose speech they did not understand......

Britain was full of people speaking a foreign language – some speaking Latin and many more speaking Brythonic which was a Celtic language.  Altogether they were called Walh, or Weals in the plural.  Wales and Welsh are later forms of Weals.  To the early English we were foreigners, even in our own country!

The same was true of the people of Cornwall.  The English called them Cornwealas, that is, the foreigners who lived in the ‘corn’ or peninsula.  Later Cormwealas was changed to Cornwall.

The origin of Cymry, our name for ourselves, is totally different.  Cymry is the plural of Cymro [Welshman], and Cymro originates in very, very early Welsh, and, before that, in a Brythonic word that was a compilation of com and bro – ‘an area of land within a boundary’.  The original meaning of Cymro was ‘a man from the same area, a man from a country or area within a boundary’.  Cymry, therefore, means ‘people from the same area’ or ‘fellow countrymen’.....

The ‘mb’ also continues in the names Cumbria and Cumberland in the north of England.  These names are forms of Cymry.  Cumberland used to be Gwlad y Cymry [The land of the Cymry], before the Cymry there were conquered by the English.  At that time the people of Cumbria and the people of our Cymru [Wales] saw each other as fellow country-people.  We, today, still call the north of England and the south of Scotland ‘Yr Hen Ogledd’ [The Old North] – our Old North!

Translated from Bedwyr Lewis Jones’ book - ‘Enwau’ (Names). This extract is taken from December 2003/January 2004; issue 21 of Plaid Cymru Melbourne Branch's `Cymru Oz` Newsletter

 Click here/Cliciwch yma  

Speaking Welsh in Cardiff