wheresrhys

The above is the title of a photo album by an old school friend of mine on facebook. Its lack of consistency in translating from welsh to English is baffling.

Firstly, Eryri is the Welsh proper name for Snowdonia, so in a way doesn’t really need translating (useful for a non native Welsh speaker, but technically “Eryri”, being a proper name, could equally well appear in an English sentence).

“Mynyddoedd y Cambria”, on the other hand is pure Welsh, which to a non-welsh speaker is absolutely meaningless. This is the part that needed translation.

Why do people not think these things through

Anyway for any of her facebook friends who decided a google search woudl be the best way of getting to the bottom of it, it means “The mountains of Cambria”, Cambria being an archaic name for Wales.

Was just talking to my Mum on the phone and something I never noticed before occurred to me.

In welsh the word for “always” is the same as the word for “never” (it’s in how you inflect… which reminds me of the Pavement lyric in Blue Hawaiian). Despite being a welsh speaker all my life I’ve never noticed this before. Given that these are words in daily use this is pretty surprising. I wonder what other linguistic oddities have also evaded me. Also, I wonder if in the welsh assembly a transcription of a speech delivered by a stubbornly welsh speaking representative is mistranslated in to English meaning the opposite of what was intended.

Dicey thing, meaning.