Forum Activity for @david-llewelyn-williams

Well, I left North Wales in 1957, so my list might be out of date. But my mother came from Abergynolwyn, in Merioneth, where I briefly attended elementary school, so I have some familiarity with mid-Wales dialects.

So: hoffi (never licio)

gyda fi is more literary than geni i ( maybe gennyf fi?)

gallu and medru both acceptable but gallu as a noun is ability with a hint of knowledge whereas medru contains a hint of practical abillity - but what do I know!

llaeth and llefrith are interchangeable

Pub is definitely Tafarn in the north! as a Calfinistic Methodist I should know!

Cwympo is to fall - disgyn is to descend (down the pit or to hell as the case might be)

The others are correct - many of the words of the South are strange to me but I do notice that nawr which is a contraction of yn awr is rwan spelled backwards - I hesitate to comment!

So which words are outside my limited vocabulary?

licio which sounds sexuall

cwpla which sounds similarly

moyn. mas and bant (Local dialect - did it come from the Irish?)

becso, gytre and gwbod (just bad spelling?)

I should comment that when I read current fiction - Atyniad, a brilliant novel on the Welsh condition by Fflur Dafydd - I do realise that the language has evolved - often by contraction.

So my comments may be out of date.

A long long time ago (1970) when i first went back after spending ten years in Canada - they picked me out by saying "You're guessing again!" So instead of saying I suppose, I would say I guess!

For me the biggest difference is in the soft mutation of the letter T. T here is only pronounced if it is the first letter is a word so Oddawa or Seaddle (rhymes with skeedadle) and Torono which leave the second t out completely. I wonder if dentistry was so rudimentary in colonial days that people had no teeth left?

Our society in Vancouver, Canada has existed for over a century. We have the benefit and also the responsibility of maintenance (!) of our own Hall, the Cambrian Hall, built in 1929. Four of our members have been chosen as Leaders of the Overseas Welsh at the National Eisteddfod and one of our current members has served as president of the NAGGA. The North American Festival of Wales was held in a Vancouver suburb, Richmond in 2003 and many of our members journeyed to Portland for the 2010 Festival. From time to time one of our members submits articles to Ninnau and I myself to Yr Enfys. In short, we maintain ties both with the Old World and the New. We have spun off two choirs, the Vancouver Welsh Mens Choir and the Vancouver Orpheus Choir and also the Dylan Thomas Circle. We hold a bilingual Church Service once a month but the Sermon is replaced by a Sgwrs - a talk about some topic of Welsh interest - for example I gave a talk on Owen Morgan Edwards. So we sing the hymns and read from the Bible but our beliefs are not dogmatic.

My younger son set up our website some years ago at www.welshsociety.com where you can view my newsletters for the past few years to read about our events and other items of cultural interest.

If you send me your email, I'll let you know when the January issue is on the website.

We celebrate St. Dwynwen in the belief that chocolates and love poetry and love songs are preferable to haggis! And we had lots of fun celebrating the marriage of Will and Kate. We have a Welsh Speaking group and a Welsh Learners.....

Nevertheless, the hardworking volunteers who are the mainstay of the Society are aging so we have to hope that the next generation will take over.