Siarad/dysgu Cymraeg?
I am a beginner Welsh learner and would like to find a penpal to exchange postcards in Welsh. I don’t mind if you’re a native speaker or are a learner like me! I’d like to write fairly regularly, maybe once a month or so.
I can make it worth your while with swaps like stickers, washi tape etc.
Please message me if this sounds up your street!
Diolch
Molly
@mollyj
This looks really interesting. I am an absolute beginner, but started learning on Duolingo during lockdown 1. I’m embarrassed that I don’t speak Welsh having lived here so long. I couldn’t write a whole postcard -I struggle with spelling Shwmae!
Maybe there is a Welsh speaking Postcrosser who might be able to help us out.
I am welsh @mollyj and can help! However due to Christmas I cant send out until January unless you’re in the UK.
Ps shw’mae is South Walian and I live in the North. We don’t use it in the North. The North and South use different words for different things. Duolingo uses mostly South Wales words. If you cant put up with the odd few words that Google doesn’t understand then I am willing to write. To complicate things further in my part of Wales we have a dialect called Jaco Welsh.
S’mae? Lapsed learner here up in North West Wales who was relatively fluent and competed in the National Eisteddfod a couple of years before I joined Postcrossing.
Currently well behind on letters so not looking for new penpals myself.
Have a look for the Nofelau Nawr series of books. Books for adult Welsh learners, and they have vocab at the bottom of the page. One great author of these is Bethan Gwanas and she wrote the story of Blodwyn Jones (a Welsh learner…). I read the trilogy a while back.
Also, listen to the language. Via the web, you can tune into BBC Radio Cymru. Perhaps try a news programme.
North Wales Welsh is slightly different to South Wales Welsh! Anyone know the difference between frogs and toads? Well, the North Wales Welsh for frog is the South Wales Welsh for toad, and well, NWW for toad is SWW for frog! Or so I’ve been told!
Another example of NWW vs SWW Welsh is the word for milk. In NWW we say Llaeth whereas in SWW they say llefrith.
My late great aunt was a native speaker and 10 years before her death she moved from the North to the South. Even though she could speak Welsh she used English all the time except for phone calls to friends and relatives in the North as she found that if she spoke Welsh she wasn’t understood due to the language differences.