#welsh langblr

[skelwrites]

b a s i c s

skel // he / him // 26

queer // trans // druidic pagan

canada (eastern time) // third-year creative writing student

w r i t i n g

nonfiction // historical fiction // poetry

↪current WIP: n/a

l a n g u a g e

native: english 🇨🇦

currently studying: welsh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 & spanish 🇦🇷🇺🇾🇨🇱

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)

[flowerpotmage]

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

[felilangblr]

¡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

[allinllachuteruteru]

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.

[emeraldastral]

!!!

Hi Elanor! Since you have followers that are learning Welsh, I wanted to tell you about a cute little language-learning indie game on Steam that just added Welsh! It’s called Influent. It teaches you vocab by letting you actually look at/pick up virtual objects and see/hear the word for it when you do! It seems the game is made by one single person, so it’s amazing they put in an endangered language considering that. In the update they said Welsh was super cool and they loved working with it :)

Holy SHIT

[salvadorbonaparte]

Any fluent Welsh speakers here?

[sadpoeticandgay]

learning welsh is so funny bc it’s like no, i don’t take it in school, no, i’m not welsh, no, i’ll never use it but i love it so much it’s my little celtic nightmare of a language

(and for the love of god, it’s not all vowels)

[smallpileoftwigs]

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 !

[llyfrenfys]

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.

[finnlongman]

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.

[chisecco]

chat what are good resources to learn welsh... its a language ive always been Curious about but i have no idea where to begin aside from learning the vowels

[lumeke]

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!

[polyglot-sock]

ok, this is super silly but i've been wanting to start learning a new language and i'm having a hard time deciding which one

soooo, i'm asking y'all to help me :)

here's the poll with all the languages from my wishlist (yes, i have one). my reasons for considering each language (as unserious as they might be) will be below. i've been considering polish, dutch or norgewian, but you can choose whichever you like most

reasons (very unserious):

polish: poland is close to my country so i might immigrate there (but also i like consonant clusters hggfdfg)

czech: don't remember why i put it on the list but i guess it looks fun

norwegian: norway looks like a great place to live

danish: north germanic languages are my favourite now (the same applies to norwegian)

dutch: seems to be a fun addition to my german (i guess germanic languages in general are my favourite)

scottish gaelic: because of a character from 1960's doctor who. also i love endangered languages (and struggling to find resources is my hobby)

welsh: long words mhuahahaha

romanian: i collect romance languages like pokemon

greek: the letters are cute ngl

korean: the same as greek + asian languages are fucked up and i enjoy suffering, apparently

let the chaos begin. the possibility of making me suffer is in your hands.

[slobozan-shitposting]

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".

[elen-aranel]

It upsets me that we have to use language to describe language

I feel like there should be another, higher thing