We find it fascinating that there are so many dialects in a language and here's an article from BBCNews about the many Welsh dialects.
DIALECTS OF WALES: HOW ONE COUNTRY HAS FIVE DIFFERENT WORDS FOR THE SAME THING
I say "tomah-to", you say "tomay-to". Or, if you're in Wales, I say "nawr", you say "rwan". More than 800,000 people in Wales speak Welsh - 874,700 to be precise, according to a survey published last week by the Office of National Statistics. Not everyone speaks the same Welsh, though. There are many different forms, styles and, yes, words that people use throughout the country.
There are clearly divides in spoken Welsh within both north and south Wales - splitting up the different dialects into a more complicated and fractured picture.
Primitive Welsh was around as far back as 550AD. After that, what’s become known as "old Welsh" was used mainly between 700AD and 1100AD.
Then, a period known as "middle Welsh" was spoken until the 15th century, before what’s known as "modern Welsh" became the norm.
In fact, according to James Fife’s The Semantics of the Welsh Verb, written in 1990, the Welsh bible, which was translated in 1558, is seen as the “bulwark of the standard language during the intervening centuries and even today is held up as a model of proper Welsh”.
But what is now considered to be "proper Welsh", and how much of a division is there?
Fife goes on to say that "it is fairly entrenched in Welsh spoken minds that the main division is between the gog (north Walian) and the hwntw (south Walian)", before adding that "Welsh as a first language exists in a number of fairly inter-intelligible dialects... it is traditional to make a major dialect break between the Welsh of north Wales and that of the south at an axis running roughly from the mouth of the Dyfi River eastwards towards Shrewsbury".
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Welsh: a brief history of a language
It’s believed that the Welsh language was born around 1,500 years ago.Primitive Welsh was around as far back as 550AD. After that, what’s become known as "old Welsh" was used mainly between 700AD and 1100AD.
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| A sign in English and a dialect of Welsh |
In fact, according to James Fife’s The Semantics of the Welsh Verb, written in 1990, the Welsh bible, which was translated in 1558, is seen as the “bulwark of the standard language during the intervening centuries and even today is held up as a model of proper Welsh”.
But what is now considered to be "proper Welsh", and how much of a division is there?
Fife goes on to say that "it is fairly entrenched in Welsh spoken minds that the main division is between the gog (north Walian) and the hwntw (south Walian)", before adding that "Welsh as a first language exists in a number of fairly inter-intelligible dialects... it is traditional to make a major dialect break between the Welsh of north Wales and that of the south at an axis running roughly from the mouth of the Dyfi River eastwards towards Shrewsbury".
MORE:
