Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales

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Most feminine singular nouns take "-au" to form the plural. However, some feminine nouns take "-od." Following the publication of Welsh [Plural]– a collection of essays offering radical and nuanced perspectives on Welshness and Wales –Wales Arts Review is delighted to share one of the 19 included essays from author, poet, memoirist and two-time Welsh Book of the Year winner Niall Griffiths. Here, he considers national and geographical divides as well as the things which unite amidst the growing popularity of Welsh independence.

However, colloquially the pronoun is often omitted when it would be translated as "it" in English, leaving:

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First and second singular forms may in less formal registers be written as tales and talest, though there is no difference in pronunciation since there is a basic rule of pronunciation that unstressed final syllables alter the pronunciation of the /ai/ diphthong.

The article triggers the soft mutation when it is used with feminine singular nouns, e.g. tywysoges "(a) princess" but y dywysoges ("the princess"). Glas means Blue, Gwrydd means Green. For example, a "blue car" is "Car Glas". But if you wish to describe a field as a "green field", in Welsh it is "Maes Glas", Glas means blue but when describing vegetation such as, leaves, grass, fields, pastures or foliage, glas means green!! One of my closest friends, born and bred in London, has joked for as long as I’ve known her about me not having a Welsh accent. It mirrors a conversation I’ve had hundreds of times. “Really? You don’t sound Welsh,” is about the size of it. Admittedly, I speak very differently to someone with what you might call a stereotypical Welsh accent. I’m not sure what people are expecting. Uncle Bryn from Gavin and Stacey, perhaps? Tom Jones? But I grew up at the other end of the country, more than 100 miles away from Barry and Pontypridd. Why would we sound the same? sometimes words borrowed from other languages will use plural forms similar to the English forms at the end of words, eg: Issa’s collection My Body Can House Two Hearts was published in 2019. She also contributed to Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales and The Mab, a retelling of the Mabinogi stories for children, both published this year.Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has been living in west Wales for a quarter of a century. Author of many works of fiction, memoir, travelogue, and poetry, his words are translated into twenty languages and he has won the Wales Book of the Year twice, most recently in 2020, for Broken Ghost. When the following word (usually a noun) begins with a vowel, yr is used, e.g. yr ardd ("the garden").

In certain places where English uses an indefinite article. English phrases like one pound per kilogram / one pound a kilogram replace the indefinite article with the definite article, e.g. un bunt y cilogram. I'm not Welsh, though my stepfather was and, according to my Ancestry DNA analysis, I am 5% Welsh, whatever that means. However I am trying to learn Welsh for no other reason than that is fascinatingly different in structure from other European languages I have studied. In the conditional, there is considerable variation between the North and South forms of these four irregular verbs. That is partly because the North form corresponds to the Middle Welsh (and Literary Welsh) imperfect indicative, while the South form corresponds to the Middle Welsh (and Literary Welsh) imperfect subjunctive.after fy– generally pronounced as if spelt y(n)– ("my") e.g. gwely ("a bed"), fy ngwely ("my bed"), pronounced yngwely By default the dictionary expects you to enter a Welsh word and to search for the English equivalent. If you are entering an English word then you need to change the first box labeled "Translate from" to "English-Welsh". The dictionary will then search for the Welsh equivalent. I’ve always been comfortable being in a space where I don’t fully understand what other people are saying,” she said. “In the UK we have several minoritised languages as well as languages that are spoken by second and third generation people, and I think it’s a really important step forward for us to start seeing ourselves as a multilingual, multicultural nation.” It may seem overwhelming, but don't worry; we will go through it step by step and provide you with examples to help you understand. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future? In this anthology of essays, authors offer imaginative, radical perspectives on the future of Wales as they take us beyond the cliches and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness. Includes essays from Charlotte Williams (A Tolerant Nation?), Joe Dunthorne (Submarine, The Adulterants), Niall Griffiths (Sheepshagger, Broken Ghost), Rabab Ghazoul (Gentle / Radical Turner Prize Nominee), Mike Parker (On the Red Hill), Martin Johnes (Wales Since 1939, Wales: England’s Colony?), Kandace Siobhan Walker (2019 Guardian 4th Estate Prize Winner), Gary Raymond (Golden Orphans, Wales Arts Review, BBC Wales), Darren Chetty (The Good Immigrant), Andy Welch (The Guardian), Marvin Thompson (Winner 2021 UK Poetry Prize), Durre Shahwar (Where I’m Coming From), Hanan Issa (My Body Can House Two Hearts), Dan Evans (Desolation Radio), Shaheen Sutton, Morgan Owen, Iestyn Tyne, Grug Muse and Cerys Hafana. s