#Abertawe

[swanseaartsshowcase]

"Ya boiis" are at it again lads!

Hit us up, either here or on Instagram if you're interested!

[hypomancy]

wedi ffindio yn dino blastig fach ar y traeth a wedi gwneud docw shoot blastig fach // found a little plastic guy on the beach and did a little plastic nature documentary photoshoot

[chelseajackarmy]

Frank Lampard playing for Swansea City AFC in 1996 on loan from West Ham

Playing against Wrexham AFC

[garthcelyn]

Lads, I am now co-running a Pride event in Swansea, so same shtick as the showcase; hit me up if you're interested in going, being a part of it, whatever - I'm just gauging interest for now

bonus points if you know businesses because I don't know Swansea

[rubyredbonnetblue]

along the River Tawe

Abertawe, Cymru / Swansea, Wales

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I’m saving up my Welsh questions so I’m not a total bother!!

1. I can broadly understand why location names in Wales are different in English (colonialism ☹️) but can you explain Castell-nedd v Neath? Maybe I haven’t gotten far enough yet but it seems to be an outlier in that they just dropped a whole part of the name?

2. Cinio v swper, I’m assuming (perhaps incorrectly hence the checking) that cinio = noon meal and swper = evening meal? Is that right or is it backwards?

3. I am deeply interested in the etymology of llun because it appears to be both a picture and (+ dydd) Monday. Are they linguistically connected??

4. Speaking of days. Am I right in inferring that dydd iau means Thursday and ddydd Iau means on Thursday? I can’t quite differentiate why the spelling changes.

5. Speaking of days part two. Nos Mercher v bore dydd Mercher. Why does nos appear to drop the dydd? Does bore ever do the same?

6. Moving away from days. There seems to be no difference between dych chi’n and wyt ti’n as far as I can tell. Are they interchangeable or are they formal/informal like vous/tu? Or is this a dialect thing like different regions??

7. I am learning about eisiau and I have a question about contractions. It appears to be dw i’n mwynhau but dw i eisiau. Why no ‘n?? I know the i’n is i yn so where’s the yn with eisiau? 🤔

Welsh my beloved you are so fun to learn but Duolingo sucks at explaining nuance.

HA okay *cracks knuckles*

1. Location names are always a bit of a wildcard between languages, because sometimes they corrupt differently and sometimes they have wildly different origins and meanings in the first place. Castell Nedd - Neath is actually a relatively mild one; it's just that people abbreviated it more in English than in Welsh. A similar thing happened to Penybont ar Ogwr - Bridgend.

By contrast, Abertawe - Swansea is totally different, with different meanings. Ditto Drefdraeth - Newport, Caergybi - Holyhead, etc. Wild shit.

2. Like a lot of languages, cinio can either mean lunch or evening meal depending on who uses it - the English equivalent is 'dinner'. Younger generations generally mean lunch. Swper is a direct transliteration of supper, though, with the same meaning (I personally use 'te' instead for evening meal). So, in short, you're broadly right, but it's a bit ambiguous.

3. Oh, you'll like this! As far as we know, it's from Proto Indo European lewk, meaning 'bright; to shine, to see' - we also get 'goleu' from it. The theory is that Dydd Llun therefore gets a similar etymology to Monday, because it refers to the moon (lleuad/luna). Llun (picture), meanwhile, is a thing you see, depicting what you see. The fact that they ultimately corrupted into the same word is coincidental.

4. There's some fun stuff here, okay.

So, you are hitting up against everyone's favourite Celtic language quirk which is MUTATIONS ┌⁠(⁠★⁠ｏ⁠☆⁠)⁠┘ These pop up in many funky ways of course. In this instance, it's not a plural but it IS trying to tell you something. So:

Dydd Iau: Thursday

Dyddiau Iau: Thursdays

Fi'n mynd i'r dre ddydd Iau: I'm going to town on Thursday

Basically, the mutation is there to indicate that there's an invisible preposition going on. If we hypercorrected it would be "Fi'n mynd i'r dre ar ddydd Iau", and that's what triggers the mutation; but in modern Welsh it's a quirk of this particular context that we do away with the preposition, because the mutation makes it clear it's there invisibly. Why do we do this? Unknown.

5. This is a slightly weird one and I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the fact that 'night' just means the dark bit while 'day' can either mean the light bit OR a 24 hour period containing both.

But, actually: you can actually drop the dydd for bore, too. It's dealer's choice. BUT, you cannot have the dydd for nos Fercher. In English, the 'day' part of 'Wednesday' is kind of invisible, and just means the 24 hour block. But in Welsh, they're still separate words, and it very much means 'the light part'. So 'nos dydd Mercher' would be like saying 'Wednesday Day Night.'

6. It's formal/plural Vs informal. Chi is formal (or plural), ti is informal.

Occasionally monoglot English Tumblrs make posts about how they reckon we should bring the you/thou divide back to English, and as a person who speaks a language that still pulls this bullshit and occasionally has to play the "How formal am I supposed to be with this person" game, every time it makes me sneer and think about how those same people complain all the livelong day about invisible social rules. You do not want this, folks. Be suitably grateful to your forebears.

7. Ah, yes, eisiau is a law unto itself.

So, the yn/'n in Welsh is normally there because the verb 'to be' gets split in half, and half gets attached to the following verb to make that verb active, right? So for example:

Rwy'n cerdded - I'm walking

Roughly, but not literally, equivalent to the English "I am walking", except if you were to split "Rwy'n" out into "Rwy yn", neither of those words means "I" or "am" - it's not a literal step by step translation.

'Yn' gets bundled in with the verb, more often than not. And again, while this is not a literal translation, it makes the verb into an '-ing' word. Welsh does not distinguish between "I walk" and "I'm walking" - it's always "I'm walking."

But eisiau is different because it's not used grammatically like that. You personally cannot actively want something in Welsh. But, there can be a want upon you. So instead of "I am wanting", you say "There is a want upon me."

So, "I want to go to town": "Mae arna'i eisiau mynd i'r dre".

Duolingo might be asking you to construct that slightly differently, though; they might want "Mae eisiau arnaf i" or something similar. But ultimately that's what it's doing.

I hope this was helpful! Let me know if anything is baffling, still.

[queerwelsh]

Pride in Wales! Balchder yng Nghymru!

Here’s a list of the Pride events happening in Wales this year, in 2023. (click the links for more information)

Dyma rhestr o ddigwyddiadau Balchder yng Nghymru blwyddyn yma, yn 2023.

22 April/Ebrill - Aberystwyth Pride / Balchder yn Aberystwyth

29 April/Ebrill - Swansea Pride / Balchder Abertawe

30 April/Ebrill - Mini Pride and Swansea Anti-Capitalist Pride (1pm Singleton Park)  / Balchder Bach a Balchder Gwrthgyfalafol Abertawe (1yp Parc Singleton)

14 May/Mai - Colwyn Bay Pride / Balchder Bae Colwyn

17 June/Mehefin - Hay Pride

17 June/Mehefin - The Big Queer Picnic

17-18 June/Mehefin - Cardiff Pride / Balchder Caerdydd (Pride Cymru)

19 June/Mehefin - Cowbridge Pride / Balchder y Bontfaen

24 June/Mehefin - Caerphilly Pride / Balchder Caerffili

24 June/Mehefin - Abergavenny Pride

24 June/Mefefin - Balchder Gogledd Cymru / North Wales Pride Caernarfon

29 June/Mehefin - 2 July/Gorffennaf - Balchder Neath Port Talbot Pride

8 July/Gorffennaf - Llandeilo Pride / Balchder Llandeilo

15 July/Gorffennaf - Llanelli Pride / Balchder Llaneilli

29 July/Gorffennaf - Llandovery Pride / Balchder Llanymddyfri

12 August/Awst - Barry Pride / Balchder y Barri

12 August/Awst - Balchder Glitter Pride Cardiff

26 August/Awst - Merthyr Tydfil Pride / Balchder Merthyr Tudful

2 September/Medi - Pride in the Port Newport / Balchder Casnewydd

9-10 September/Medi - RCT Pride

15-17 September/Medi - Trans Pride Cardiff

16 September/Medi - Carmarthen Pride/Balchder Caerfyrddin

[foolfortune]

Spring in Abertawe

[llyfrenfys]

Cwiaroleg!

Dw i wedi bod yn gweithio gyda @/queertawe i greu sesiwn i drafod terminoleg anneuaidd yn y Gymraeg.

Amser: 6yp-8yp 11 Mehefin yn @/tytawe, Christina St, Abertawe. Mae tocynnau am ddim, ond archebwch drwy @/queertawe.

Dw i'n symud fflat ym mis Mai a Mehefin. Ni allaf ddod yn anffodus! Ond gobeithio y bydd y sesiwn yn ddefnyddiol ac yn ddiddorol.

/

Queerology!

I've been working with QueerTawe to create a session to talk about Welsh nonbinary terminology.

Time: 6pm-8pm 11th June at @/tytawe, Christina St, Swansea.

Tickets are free but please book your place through @/queertawe.

I'm moving flat in May and June. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend the session myself. But I hope the session is useful and interesting!

[garadinervi]

Dylan Thomas: Word and Image – An Exhibtion Based on The Jeff Towns / Dylans Bookstore Collection, Foreword by Sean Doran, Introduction by John Ackerman, Text by Jeff Towns, Swansea Leisure, Swansea-Abertawe, 1995

Front Cover Image: Paul Hughes & Phillip Jacobs Back Cover Painting: Peter Evershed

[swanseaartsshowcase]

You haven't seen the last of us yet! Swansea Arts Showcase is running a Pride event!

We're looking for queer artists, crafters, writers for an arts fair later this month/early next month (we'll update soon with further details when we solidify the venue).

Interested? Shoot us an email at swanseaartsshowcase@gmail.com or contact Kit (@garthcelyn) here on this very Tumblr or Sam over on Instagram

Hope to see you there!

[chelseajackarmy]

Ben Cabango // Swansea City AFC

[musicblogwales]

World Cub Announce New Album 'Back To The Beginning'

North Walian group Worldcub will release their new concept album Back To The Beginning on 17th May. The album is a carefully crafted collection of tracks which takes you on a psych-infused journey through time, space and everything in between. It feels vintage yet modern, perfectly blending the two sounds.

Lead single and title track ‘Back To The Beginning’ sets the album’s tone, opening up new worlds with kraut rock groove, spacey guitar and floating keyboards. Floating harmonies and melodies accompany us on a journey into the unknown. ‘Grog’ is one of my favourites on the album. It’s pulsing, groovy and trippy and the fantastic surf-guitar is a real highlight.

‘Look Through The Keyhole’ carries on the vintage and retro feel to the album. It’s hypnotic and mesmerising, with a heavier guitar sound than the previous track. ‘One Small Mistake’ is another single taken from the album. It's almost samba-like rhythm is lucid and bouncing and is a real ‘feel-good’ track. A shift in pace is seen with ‘Birdy’ which is a slower folk inspired track before returning to an upbeat, samba and bossa nova sound with ‘Retreat Recover’.

On ‘Hel y Hadau’ and ‘Pwysau Yn Pwyso’, the band sing in Welsh and create luscious vocal harmonies and a rich and beautiful soundscape, while ‘Birdy II’ sees a return to folk. The album’s final songs feel reflective and open. They complete the journey this album takes you and are a fitting conclusion.

Back To The Beginning is a wonderful blend of old and new, taking influence from a number of genres. It’s trippy and psychedelic, spacious and welcoming and guides you through the past and future unknowns.

The band will be playing a handful of live shows to celebrate the album’s release.

Tour Dates: 93 FEET EAST, London - 24th May Gwyl Tawe, Abertawe/Swansea - 8th June No1 Harbourside, Bristol - 6th July

Back To The Beginning is out on 17th May.

https://worldcub.bandcamp.com/

Words: George Phillips

[gwynbleiddyn]

i took a train home today, at sunset, from caerdydd to abertawe, watching the fields and the houses pass by - it’s a path i know so well that every garden with a flag i remember is like a little mark on the countdown to my station - and there was something so revealing about the golden hour that just illuminated this heavy sense of nostalgia in me. and i want you to listen for a moment because when a cymro speaks of nostalgia like this, the meaning of hiraeth is crystal clear.

i carry so much grief for the pieces of my past that i can't endlessly carry with me through my life. i found myself looking at all these houses and their back gardens with scattered children’s toys and higgedlypiggedly furniture, assembled to accommodate unexpected visitors on a sunny afternoon. with each house that passed, the same sort of thoughts kept going through my mind: "that's somewhere that was shared with friends that aren't here anymore, or with dogs that don't run in the garden like they used to, or with birds that have long since nested elsewhere.” i watched the m4 unwind over aberkenfig, the point at which the m4 becomes a three lane motorway and, in the eyes of a young child on a school trip to the forests of margam, that marked the furthest point from home he could remember. i passed a school and its empty playground, and the smell of my year 4 classroom completely filled my mind.

all of that is hiraeth. unreachable, a lost time, a lost place. but the uniqueness of hiraeth is that the memory that provokes it is intrinsic to cymru - it’s in these sunlit fields and mountains and the sea on the homeward horizon that i recognize my grief.

in fact, calling it nostalgia almost feels too weak. it actually feels like a kind of heartbreak to me, but not in the usual sense of a heartbreak that is earth-shattering, where the world stops and breathes in deep before it turns upside down and inside out and leaves your stomach hollow like you've been left on the top of a rollercoaster, but more like this slow erosion, this slow and hungry tide that eats away at the cliffs year by year, unnoticed by you until you stop one day some ten years later and look back at the land of your life that has been swallowed by this inevitable sea. you can’t reclaim it, you didn’t even know you were losing it in the first place. 

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Hello I have more Welsh questions I hope that’s okay!

As always, the Duolingo disclaimer because some of their choices seem suspect. Like the first word they made sure to teach me was draig and it did seem a little racist to suggest to me THIS IS GOING TO COME UP A LOT IN WALES YOU HAD BETTER LEARN IT. Of course maybe I’m racist for assuming that’s connected to the Welsh mysticism nonsense and not the flag, or maybe draig does come up often on the streets of Aberteifi. I am here to learn with an open mind and minimal ego.

Anyway. Question one is indeed about places.

1. How do you decide whether a place needs a y with it? I can’t seem to tell, some countries have it and some don’t which confuses this dumb American. Plus it seems like no cities have it?

2. Also on the topic of cities, I can understand that there are places in Wales that have English names and that some don’t. Looks like Abertawe : Swansea v Aberystwyth : Aberystwyth. Two parter - part one, why did some get renamed while others stayed Welsh? Part two, is it preferred to just use the Welsh name? I’m wondering what common practice/preference is.

3. On the topic of common practice, I have a question that I am desperately trying to make as inoffensive as possible because it’s really about the trustworthiness of Duolingo than anything else. But it’s teaching me words that I want to make sure are appropriate. Ysgrifenydd/ysgrifennyddes and gŵr tŷ/gwraig tŷ. Are these still appropriate to use?

Thank you so much! I know you’re not the Welsh ambassador to the internet (or are you??) so I appreciate you being so generous with everyone 💛

I am, of course, 100% the Welsh ambassador to the internet. Or at least, I work in the Tumblr consulate. Ignore the people who say I'm just some random with airs and graces, they're just jealous and you're not to listen.

Okay, so:

1. Definite Articles and Placenames. It's not so much a thing you need to work out grammatically as it is just... part of the name. This sometimes happens in English too - Netherlands is an acceptable country name now, but originally it would have been the Netherlands, just because that's what the name meant. The lands that are low lying.

Welsh just has more country names than English that mean something like that, I think. Some are the same, e.g. (the) Netherlands/(yr) Iseldiroedd; that's a fairly one to one translation, in fact. Some are the same, but a bit more literal than the English has become; Switzerland (the Land of the Swiss) has lost the "the" in English by now, but in Welsh it still clings on as y Swistir.

And then sometimes, we have a very different word for somewhere, but it's no longer clear what the fossilised grammar was. I suppose the biggest example of that is Scotland - yr Alban. It's a bit lost to time, now, but 'Alban' has the same Old Irish root there as the word 'Albion'. Why the definite article? Unknown.

But, we do it for smaller places too, including cities. Welshpool's Welsh name is y Trallwng, which means, like, "the boggy pool", and I suppose it was once a notable enough bog that it was THE bog when giving directions, so the article stayed. This also spills over into Wenglish - the Hafod and the Gower in/around Swansea should both more correctly be Hafod and Gower, but at some point it was THE hafod when giving directions, and the Gower is the abbreviation of the Gower peninsula.

Anyway: TL;DR it's just part of the name, rather than a grammatical choice.

2. Translated Placenames. Part 1:

The short of it is, "Did enough English people settle there that they needed an English name/ the Welsh became Anglicised?" That's usually the rule. Sometimes this meant Anglicisation (Caerdydd-Cardiff), sometimes a ropey-to-exact translation (Penybont - Bridgend), and sometimes a completely new name (Abertawe - Swansea), depending on how easy the Welsh was to say and whether or not there was feature of note that the English focused on.

Occasionally, though, you get the opposite - Wrexham was Wrexham first, and got Cymricised to Wrecsam. It's a rare example of an English city we nicked, see. Founded by the Saxon house of Mercia, on land they'd nicked from north Wales, and then the Welsh reclaimed the area and went 'Ooh, nice city, was this here before?' It's possible it was first called Caer Fantell in Welsh, but it was Gwrexham by the 13th century, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Part 2: You use the name in the language you're speaking, UNLESS it is under active contention for some reason. The national parks are currently pushing to only be known by their Welsh names, for example, ditto a few of the mountains; so, Eryri instead of Snowdonia, Bannau Brycheiniog instead of Brecon Beacons, and yr Wyddfa instead of Snowdon. Also, in recent years they started inventing English language names for villages in Gwynedd for English tourists to feel more comfortable with, which has caused the outrage you'd expect; but those won't be coming up on Duolingo.

With that said, it's sometimes a Welsh Nash signal to only use the Welsh placenames even in English, so don't be surprised if you see people do it.

3. Appropriate words. Not sure what you mean by appropriate here, but I'm guessing you mean because they're gendered terms?

Welsh is a gendered language; that's how it works. In the modern day, there is a slide towards a lot of the old 'feminine' endings being dropped in favour of the masculine becoming used as a gender neutral term, but that's still under development; officially and formally, you still gender it.

I certainly prefer Not doing that. My first two graduate jobs were Conservation Officer and Conservation Manager; my preference was to use Swyddog Cadwraeth and Rheolwr Cadwraeth in Welsh. But others (usually older generations) would write Swyddoges Gadwraeth and Rheolwraig Gadwraeth sometimes, which I personally thought was a bit old fashioned and patronising.

But, I know middle aged women who prefer it, because it makes it clear that it's a woman doing the job. One person's oppression is another's liberation and all that. Also, cis though I am, I am admittedly not always comfortable with the strict trappings of gender, and that probably plays a part.

Bonus answer: dragons are the national animal and very much a symbol of identity, so that's just them being cute lol

Anyway! Thank you so much for trying to learn Welsh! Croeso a diolch.

[queerwelsh]

Abertawe! Swansea! 🦢

Starting in one week - 3 sessions exploring LGBTQ+ clips, films, music and TV shows in the Welsh Broadcast Archive (National Library Wales) 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

100% free, with refreshments, you can come to 1, 2 or 3 of the sessions ☕️

In Elysium Gallery & Bar, Swansea, at 5:30pm on the 10th, 17th and 29th of October!

-

Yn dechrau mewn 1 wythnos - 3 sesiwn yn archwilio clipiau, ffilmiau, cerddoriaeth a rhaglenni teledu LHDCT+ o'r Archif Ddarlledu Cymru (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru) 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

100% Am ddim, gyda the a choffi, ac mae croeso i chi dod i 1, 2 neu 3 o'r sesiynau ☕️

Yn Elysium, Abertawe, am 5:30yh ar y 10fed, 17eg a 29ain o Hydref

(Bydd y sesiynau'n ddwyieithog)

Dewch yn llu!