Somethng to Declare, Technical and local stuff

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We have had rugby and there are some bits involving climbing coming up, as well as rather a lot of local Welsh stuff. I have added weblinks to photos and reference sites that will give some explanation, but I do not want to tangle the narrative of a story that is important to me with a lot of technical exposition. If anyone wants or needs to work out whet the hell I am writing about, feel free to ask and I will answer.I was reminded of the problem when a comment (a nice one) was made about "places on the Moon"

Comments

Groan

I thought, no, not Angharad, she's too nice to do things like that to me.....but it seems I was wrong. There I thought it would be neath you

Tregaron

Brings back memories of some very hard cycling.

Just one in particular. Pushing the tandem up the Devil's Staircase fully laden with luggage and food for the Easter tour. Pitch black, no lights (we'd been assured we wouldn't need any) snowing - the relief at reaching an over-packed Dolgoch YHA (George never turned anyone away)- then a ride on to Tregaron on a virgin-snow covered deserted road the following morning. It was Winter at Dolgoch but glorious Spring in Tregaron.

I saw my first red kite that weekend over Tregaron Bog when they were still very rare. The chances of seeing one whilst peeing out an open bus door on the M40, as Cyclist tells us, was just about nil LOL. Didn't know about the elephant, though.

Robi

Mutations

Nope, not the Y-men or retcon stuff, but the Welsh language. Almost everything in Welsh inflects depending on place and role in the sentence. The one that caught out Jenny 1938 was the soft mutation. "Rwyt ti'n ferch?" "Merch o hyd"
The "girl" in the first example follows the predicative, "yn", and so has a treiglad meddal, a soft mutation. The same word in the next doesn't, so stays as the radical,or root form. The treigladau are cysefin, meddal, trwynol and llaes, which in English are radical, soft, nasal and spirant. Thus, for various aspects of Wales, you have Cymru, i Gymru, yng Nghymru and a Chymru. The first line of the national anthem "Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi" contains one soft "[g]wlad" because it follows a preceding adjective, and one nasal "[tadau]nhadau" because it follows the possessive.

Prepositons inflect as well, just to really make your heads hurt.

Angharad mentions the verb "bod" to be. There are two ways of saying something in Welsh. You can inflect the verb-noun, like Latin, or you can use an auxiliary verb. South and West Wales use "bod", but the North do odd things with another, daru. The sentence structure in Welsh usually reads "It is that I am in the process of doing something" or "bod + pronoun or subject + predicative + verbnooun + object"
Mae eira [y]'n dod---snow is coming
Mae eira wedi dod---snow has come

Pronunciaton

Stan asked about this. Vowels:all values are English not US.
A as in hat
E as in bet or as in pain
I as in beet, occasionally as in sit.
O as in hot, or boat, or when with a crcumflex (little hat) as in pawn
U s odd. t depends on whether you are South Welsh or a Gog (Northerner) South: ee. North : lke the French Tu, a cross between oo and ee.
Y: two sounds. Clear is lke U, obscure is like the three sounds in another.
W: Fool, school

Most other consonants are like English, but C s always as a K.
CH: as in Scottish loch.
DD: as in English this, that, the other. D is just d
TH: as n thick and thin
PH: as in photo
FF: as in film
F: as in van, virus, village
NG: as n ring, not finger, except in the place name Bangor.
NH, NGH, RH: as the latters look so you pronounce them
LL : Place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth and blow shle trying to say "L" so t sounds almost like you are saying HL. L s just L.

Stress is normally on the last but one syllable.