duolingo, bureau of my uncle sentences, the welsh character

[cimorene]

Well, when we started studying Welsh a month ago, it was my suggestion to help my sister feel more connected to her roots. We both downloaded it on Duolingo, and I liked it immediately, but she was put off by the irregularities in pronunciation and spelling. I told her we could pick another joint activity from our immigrant ancestors, like Dutch or Polish (or Irish, but I went ahead and ruled it out because I knew if she couldn't hack the Welsh spelling Irish would be right out). Since one of our grandmothers was of exclusively Yiddish-speaking ancestry, that wins percentage-wise, but there's no Duolingo Yiddish course yet so we decided to sample each others' second languages instead. So I started Russian and she started Swedish, after we both gave Dutch a bit of a whirl as a second option. I've still been doing more with Welsh though because I'm having fun and have made a fair bit of progress there.

I think part of it is that the Duolingo Welsh course is more engaging than the Duolingo Russian one, but I'm also just kinda having more fun with Welsh. It's fun and a bit silly and the course, at least, is making me increasingly wonder...

• Are the Welsh just constantly chowing down on parsnips and leeks?


• Is Brittany truly up there on equal footing, as a non-UK destination, with Spain, Italy, France, and... Australia??


• Is every home incomplete without a harp? Do you really bring up harp possession in getting-to-know you small talk? Is it a matter of great concern to the average Welshperson whether they can receive... whatever it's called, bedside harp therapy???


• Is a horse a similar fixture that everyone assumes you are likely planning to get? And why just horses, no ponies?


• Is furniture-making a popular activity? Learning 'make', I would have been way more inclined to go for foods and art projects, but Duolingo aimed directly at chairs and tables.


• Do dragons come up frequently in conversation (I hope)?

I should mention that in some ways the Russian course is very funny. It wouldn't neccessarily have struck me as very funny before I moved to Finland, because I'd only known two Russian people in my childhood, but now that I've spent a lot of time around Russians and encountered a lot of Russian expats here in Finland, witnessing their interactions with each other and with non-Russians, the two speakers who read the sentences for Duolingo practically get a laugh out of me with every sentence because they just sound so extremely Russian.

Comments

[thedivinegoat]

1. Leeks yes, parsnips no, (at least in this house)
2. I think shared heritage gives them a boost in importance.
3. We don't have one, but we do have a local pub called The Harp...
4. It feels like it. (Cobs and ponies are as equally in evidence as horses)
5. Not noticeably
6. Yes. Lots.

[cimorene]

Ooh, okay, are leeks eaten by themselves then? I'm not unfamiliar with leeks at all, but while they're pretty common in Finnish cooking, it's mostly in mixed root vegetable dishes in my experience. I've never heard of anybody eating leek by itself, aside from leek soup (which also has potato in it around here... but it is called leek soup anyway).

Maybe we're just gonna learn the word for pony a bit later.

I was starting to wonder if there was a sort of universal anxiety about not being able to get on the harp ladder. There were SO MANY HARP SENTENCES.

[spark]

Mostly agree, here's the view from rural canolbarth Cymru:

1. Leeks yes, parsnips yes, but leeks more. Leeks on pizza is standard.

2. Yes, absolutely. And New Zealand and Argentina more than Spain, Italy, France or Australia. Argentina because of Y Wladfa.

3. Harps are a thing, but not an omnipresent thing. I have yet to actually encounter one.

4. Farmers here disdain horses as bad for the fields, they're more an incomer thing, except Welsh ponies are important in all their varieties.

5. Agree not especially.

6. Yes but as symbolic of Wales, not so much as creatures in themselves.

Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIvvEBzpodY and catch "the dragonfire died" reference for example.

[cimorene]

Could you use ceffyl to refer to a Welsh pony, or do they exclusively get their own special term(s)?

I wonder why they haven't introduced New Zealand then... maybe they didn't want to be biased against mainland Europe...

[spark]

I think you could use ceffyl, but now I'm curious and will have to find out!

I suspect that for both animals and countries, the course is more following a sort of standard language learning set than picking the most relevant ones for Cymru. Otherwise it would have covered badgers and foxes and red kites.

I know some youngish Welsh people who've been to New Zealand but have never been to London.

[cimorene]

That's kind of adorable, yet thoroughly relatable. I mean, London has museums, sure, but it doesn't have nearly as cute accents or as exotic views and it definitely doesn't have Hobbiton.

I appreciate owl a lot, but most of the animals we learned seem to be aimed at toddler and baby families. They're a combination of barnyard and exotic animals that are extremely common as toys and most of the animal sentences are things you could easily overhear at a daycare.

But I agree, local wildlife would be far more useful and interesting than non-native zoo animals! I endorse the farm animals, obviously.

[spark]

There's also some hostility to London involved, but only fondness for New Zealand (international siblinghood of sheep).

Apparently Welsh pony is merlen Gymreig, it seems to be customarily Gymreig rather then Gymraeg, but same meaning as far as I can tell. Here's a nice page if you feel like a bit of translation practise =) http://www.s4c.cymru/cy/ffeithiol/ceffylau-cymru/

[templemarker]

international siblinghood of sheep

this is now a favorite phrase!

[cimorene]

I don't think I have enough grammar basics to embark on an attempt at translation with a dictionary, but I will look in case of pictures

[templemarker]

Ha! The Welsh Duolingo is rich in topics from Welsh tourism, for sure.

[cimorene]

That makes a kind of sense, I suppose! If you assumed that your main audience in the course were newcomers to the area, like, say, Swedish and Finnish classes, which usually are taught to immigrants, as opposed to say, English, French, Spanish, or German, which are often learned by people living elsewhere.

Though I definitely get the impression elsewhere that the main audience of Welsh learners are simply Welsh people whose native language is English. Admittedly, most of the topics are logical choices for that...

[templemarker]

There are some long-established Welsh legacy immigrant communities in US, particularly in Ohio -- I bet the DuoLingo course is popular there, too. It would be interesting to see a map of course users!

I did my sophomore year of undergrad in Wales and took Welsh, and I've done the Duolingo course on and off over the years -- let me tell you, it makes a huge difference to learning a Brythonic language to have a native or academic speaker with you in-person. (Obviously that's true for languages in general, but the niche value of Welsh globally really reinforced that idea to me.)

[cimorene]

There's a map in the Welsh Duolingo forum frontpage, I think? Or maybe I'm thinking of the SSIW map...

[templemarker]

Ooh, of course there is. Nerdlove!