#garlic is gar-leek which is something like ''spear onion'' | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

underthehedge · 9 months ago

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These all sound way too plausible, touché

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus i bawb!

That's right! It's WALES' BIRTHDAY*!!! Yaaaaayyyy today you are all Welsh. Enjoy your 24 hours of perfect harmonisation ability and utter disinterest in any celebrities. Watch out for the dragons.

*It is not Wales' birthday

I have decided to revive an old favourite of this blog to mark the occasion - prepare for a classic Pick The Fake Welsh Word Poll! And to super charge the Welshness today we are assessing the glory that is the daffodil - the national flower of Wales (lol not really, our national flower is the leek. And that's why queen Lizzie Two had to get coronated with a leek on her dress because we refused to let them use the daffodil even when the palace designer begged. Iconic.)

(But the daffodil is still a symbol of Wales, so it counts here.)

So! Let's go! Etymology at the end.

Etymology Notes

Croeso'r Gwanwyn - they flower in March! Hence the St David's Day link. One of the first flowers to bloom in spring.

Clych babi - the trumpet bit looks like a bell, I suppose, and has similar (make a noise' connotations. Why a baby? Dunno. Maybe a spring link again.

Gwayw brenin - the leaves are definitely spear-like, and the petals look a bit like a crown

Pibell felen - 'pibell' usually means a pipe in the sense of music, so another trumpet reference. Except we didn't have trumpets in Wales, so pipe it is

Gylfinog - the trumpet again. The word is often used for animals (morfil gylfinog is beaked whale, for example). Cognate with Cornish gelvinek, Irish gulba, etc.

Cenhinen Pedr - Peter is probably the saint. The leek is otherwise a Welsh emblem

Lily pengam - the angle of the flower head, maybe, makes it 'wry-headed'? And then the lily link, which turns up a few times

Melyn Clamai - yellow is obvious. Clamai is a corruption of Calan Mai - May Eve. Another reference to the time of year

Lili Clamai - lily again, Calan Mai again.

Dwndili - a corruption of the English word 'daffodil', and the lili again

Daffidondili - further corruption

Daffitwndili - corruption but with hypercorrection of the d to a t! Can you tell these ones are dialectic?

~~~

Enjoy!

#welsh #hrmm I'm going for clych babi though #simply because I think it's probably a name for a flower but not daffodils #though then again it really doesn't look much like a leek #but also there's a number of English plants called 'leek' that aren't anything like your common leek #fun fact leek in English is just like an old word for alliums in general #garlic is gar-leek which is something like ''spear onion''#onions also used to be knelek ''knee-leek''#this is however unrelated to cennin #anyway I voted so time to ask the boyfriend which it is #I'm fully prepared to find out it was a trick question and they're all true

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