Celtic languages - Welsh

First of all I'll just mention a few points about the Welsh language more or less at random, just to whet your appetite for it.

Welsh is an Indo-European language, and quite closely related to Latin. But like the other Celtic languages, it has a few odd features which go against the Indo-European trend. For one thing, its basic word order is verb first in the sentence. For example, the boy broke the window comes out in literary Welsh as

Torrodd y bachgen y ffenestr

Here torrodd is a third person past tense form of the verb torri, break. The definite article is y, and bachgen and ffenestr are boy and window respectively. The sentence shows a basic VSO order. The word merch means girl, but the girl is y ferch. This illustrates the phenomenon of "mutation": certain consonants at the beginning of words undergo changes under some syntactical conditions. One of these conditions is being a feminine noun with the definite article in front. Like French and other Romance languages all Welsh nouns are either masculine or feminine. A classic example of mutation is the various forms the word ci, dog may take:

fy nghi       my dog
ei gi           his dog
ei chi         her dog

These mutations are caused by the words for my, his, and her being placed in front of the noun.

Look at this sentence:

Mae Eluned wedi gyrru ei char hi         Eluned has driven her car

The "literal" meaning of the sentence is Eluned is after the driving of her car. What seems to be the main verb, gyrru, drive, is actually a verbal noun, part of the noun phrase gyrru ei char hi, the driving of her car. Car is the word for car, and it has a mutation because of ei, her, as happened with ci before. There is no equivalent of of in such noun phrases. Here is another example:

Mae'r ffenestr wedi cael ei thorri hi    The window has been broken

It is interesting that in Welsh passive forms have almost disappeared. The verb noun cael means get, so the literal meaning of the Welsh sentence is the window is after the getting of its breaking, which you can compare with Eluned is after the driving of her car. The word thorri is a mutation of the verb noun torri, break, due to ei, her, being in front of it - ffenestr, window, is feminine in Welsh.

You can see that noun phrases are rather prominent in Welsh, and what would be subordinate clauses in English often become noun forms in Welsh, for instance,

Dw i'n meddwl bod y ffenestr wedi cael ei thorri hi    I think the window has been broken.

A literal translation of this sentence would be I think the window's being after the getting of its breaking. Bod is the verb noun be.

However, in the literary language at least, negative subordinate clauses cannot be made into nouns:

Dw i'n meddwl nad ydy'r ffenestr wedi cael ei thorri hi     I think the window has not been broken.

Here the subordinate clause is a verbal sentence, as it is in English, except that the word for not, nad, is only used in subordinate clauses.

Although Welsh is a verb first language, there is one kind of sentence which cannot be put into that form. To express, for instance, Mr Jones is our doctor, the Welsh sentence

Mr Jones ydy ein meddyg

has to be used - ydy is the verb, but it must come after the subject. When we want to say I think that Mr Jones is our doctor, the Welsh expression is

Dw i'n meddwl mai Mr Jones ydy ein meddyg.

This is just like the English expression, with mai for that.

So Welsh has three different ways of expressing subordinate clauses! That should not put you off, but make you think how remarkable the ways of language are. How flexible the human mind is, and how more flexible we can make our own minds, by learning to express ourselves in other languages!

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There are some elementary Welsh lessons, and lots of links to other stuff useful to learners, at http://www.cs.brown.edu/fun/welsh.
The BBC also has courses for beginners, called Catchphrase, so if you want to make a start on the language before classes begin, there is plenty of online material available!

Also, if you look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/welsh , you will find not only news in Welsh for Welsh speaking people, but also news in simpler Welsh for beginners. The news is in audio form as well as written, and even if you don't understand anything to begin with, you will get used to what the language sounds like. In any case, the main news items on some particular day may be familiar to you, so you can hear the Welsh with some idea of what it is about.

If you feel like buying some reasonably priced books, the larger bookshops in Osaka, especially Junkudo, generally stock copies of Teach Yourself Welsh by Julie Brake and Christine Jones (Hodder and Stoughton 2000), which is good. You can often find small dictionaries in the shops too.

In class we shall be using my own textbook, which is continually in the process of being completed! Links below will take you to the pronunciation guide and the first few lessons, so you can make a start before term begins, if you like.

In order to view the pronunciation guide, pages 1 to 10, correctly, you may need to download the Charis SIL IPA fonts which I used for the phonetic transcriptions. Those fonts are available free at

CharisSILfont

I have included a rough guide to pronunciation using mainly English words, so you can still learn something from those pages, even without the phonetic transcriptions. If you can't download the fonts, though, don't waste paper printing out the pages - I will bring some copies to the first class. The first pages of lessons (11 to 33) don't use any special symbols.

So here are the downloads!

Yr Iaith Gymraeg 1-10.doc
Yr Iaith Gymraeg 11-33.doc

To decide grades, there will be an examination at the end of each term.