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[SealyStar]

I'm a native speaker of English, and it's a fine and dandy language for day-to-day life. It's not perfect, though. For one thing, the idiotic simplicity of it (no noun cases, no grammatical gender, and very, very little verb conjugation) makes any more-complex language harder to learn.

[Starver]

Casnewydd,- that means Newport, doesn't it?

Well, technically it's a shortened form of the Welsh for "Newcastle (on Usk!)", I happen to know, but it's the same place as us Sais call Newport.

I've mentioned elsewhere how Abermaw ("Mouth of the Mawddach") became "Barmouth" through some interesting English pronunciation/'translation' process.  Abergwaun ("Mouth of the Gwaun") actually became known as Fishguard, though, through the influence of the Vikings, or their kin...

I have some family from [...] somewhere else, starting with a C

Cardiff[1]?

Other than that, there's a few places (several "Caer"s) beginning with C, or I could make a great big (war)ham(er)-fisted stab in the dark by suggesting somewhere within Ceredigion (Cardiganshire) or Carmarthenshire...


[1] or Caerdydd/Caerdyf...  "Caer" being "fortress" and "dyf" being a variant on the name of the river Taff[2], which is somewhat eponymous to the people of Wales, insofar as their nickname...

[2] But c.f. various the rivers called the "Dove" (examples in England existing in various places ranging from Suffolk to North Yorkshire, at the very least!) and the Dovey in Wales itself.  Probably derived from the same Celtic word for dark/black as seen in Dublin (=="Blackpool"!)  Isn't deciphering a multi-layered inheritance of geographic language fun?

[Starver]

English [...] no grammatical gender [...] makes any more-complex language harder to learn.

That's just them being awkward[1].  I mean why is a table considered to be male/female?  Or a bridge female/male?  Only because the language says it is[2], and different languages can't even agree as to why certain things are what they are.

What's the classic German (Neuter-including) example?  Translates as something like "The young English Miss, it is out out shopping for a blanket. The blanket, she must be blue."?

[1] Need I say "IMHO"?

[2] Of course we do call ships "she", etc, but that's courtesy/deference/chauvinistic-possessiveness/whatever, not part of a language-wide arbitrariness!

[Mimidormi]

L1 Italian speaker here, with English as a second language, followed by Latin, ancient Greek, some French and Spanish.

I code switch frequently on a given day, from having to read on a daily basis international articles and conversing with native speakers online, mostly from the U.S.

I can understand without problems received pronunciation, most of Southern England accents, Welsh accented English and Standard American, but i struggle with American English regional variants, Scottish, Irish, and Australian.

My most common mistakes: i tend to pronounce every single syllable, put stress on the wrong syllable, pronounce 'th' as either t or d, and go for old-fashioned, too formal, Latin derived words (which ironically are of lower register in my language. I somewhat suspect this is a quirk of other native romance languages speakers as well. Confirm/deny?).

Just my personal opinion: i find English melodious, and awesomely practical, as in, able to convey much in few words, and way more nuanced than it is given credit for. A relatively simple grammar isn't necessarily a drawback in my book.
If you're wondering how it sounds to me as a foreigner, sounds like everything is pronounced at the back of the mouth, yet surprisingly delicate.

As for the hick variant of Italian, it's tricky to pinpoint the most iconic, since almost any region has one, given the history of the country.
Here's an example of a stereotypical ciociarian farmer, by an actor but still very close to the real thing.

[RedKing]

It probably helps that bilingualism is more or less the norm in this part of the world, especially within our schools. Road signs in Wales are the best things ever.

Of course, if the people making and installing the signs aren't fluent, it can lead to mistakes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The welsh here reads: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated".

That is pretty much the best thing ever.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I've always found Welsh confusing. It's closer to English geographically than French or German, but much less similar to it than either of the aforementioned.

[RedKing]

I've always found Welsh confusing. It's closer to English geographically than French or German, but much less similar to it than either of the aforementioned.

Well, I think that's because (based on earlier comments about the Welsh in this thread) we've determined that the Welsh are actually a race of Cthulhu-worshipping Yodas. 

[MonkeyHead]

I've always found Welsh confusing. It's closer to English geographically than French or German, but much less similar to it than either of the aforementioned.

Well, I think that's because (based on earlier comments about the Welsh in this thread) we've determined that the Welsh are actually a race of Cthulhu-worshipping Yodas. 

That I am, boyo.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

wast the original innsmouth located somewhere on great britain?

edit: oh right, i'm mixing it up with innsmouthanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

[Pnx]

I've always found Welsh confusing. It's closer to English geographically than French or German, but much less similar to it than either of the aforementioned.

It makes sense when you understand that the original founders of England were invaders from multiple cultures that hated the local Celts. Very little Gaelic made it into the English language.

[Glyndŵr]

I've always found Welsh confusing. It's closer to English geographically than French or German, but much less similar to it than either of the aforementioned.

It makes sense when you understand that the original founders of England were invaders from multiple cultures that hated the local Celts. Very little Gaelic made it into the English language.

Of course very little Gaelic made it into the English language, the Gaels had very little contact with the English and Sassenachs and so forth until they managed to invade the southern and coastal regions of Scotland and of course the English conquest of Ireland. You are thinking of the languages of the people that once lived in Lloegyr (and in some cases, still do). Those men were the Britons, not the Gaels, a completely different group of people. They spoke the Brythonic languages like Ancient British, Cwmbric, later Cornish, Welsh and so on, which are quite distinct from the Gaelic tongues that you'll find in Scotland, the Isle of Man and Ireland.

That said, there are odd similarities between Gaelic and English. The one that really jumps to my mind is "Bithidh" or "Bidh" for the future tense of "to be", which is just pronounced "be". We also say "mi" for "me" and "I". You end up with sentences that are oddly reminiscient of English like:

"Bidh mi a' coiseachd air na monaidhean" - "Bee mee ah coshachk air na monayean" (Monadh has an ancient link with the Welsh word Mynydd)

"Will be I walking on the moors/fields/mountains" or simply "Be me a' walking on the mountains" (it's complicated, I think it can be all three. The Scottish Gaels have dozens of words for different kinds of hill, field, plots of land, glen etc)".

Either these are very old Indo-European traits that English and Gaelic have in common, or there's something else going on there entirely.

You also notice bits like "caise" for cheese, which although is pronounced "cahshe", it's a bit like "Käse". Maybe that's a bit of Norse or something that's crept in through the Western Isles or something.

[Karnewarrior]

I heard English is the most versatile language in the world.

But as if to balance that, it's utterly insane and being added onto by people with absolutely no clue what they're doin'.

' now = G, G.

Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo.

English is like a giant middle finger to the rest of the world saying "I can be utterly insane and still be more coherent than you!"

[Hanslanda]

I heard English is the most versatile language in the world.

But as if to balance that, it's utterly insane and being added onto by people with absolutely no clue what they're doin'.

' now = G, G.

Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo.

English is like a giant middle finger to the rest of the world saying "I can be utterly insane and still be more coherent than you!"

In America, it's mostly this, but with a whole lot of this:

But as if to balance that, it's utterly insane and being added onto by people with absolutely no clue what they're doin'.

To ruin all the good stuff.

[Reudh]

I've mentioned elsewhere how Abermaw ("Mouth of the Mawddach") became "Barmouth" through some interesting English pronunciation/'translation' process.  Abergwaun ("Mouth of the Gwaun") actually became known as Fishguard, though, through the influence of the Vikings, or their kin...

I have some family from [...] somewhere else, starting with a C

Cardiff[1]?

Other than that, there's a few places (several "Caer"s) beginning with C, or I could make a great big (war)ham(er)-fisted stab in the dark by suggesting somewhere within Ceredigion (Cardiganshire) or Carmarthenshire...


[1] or Caerdydd/Caerdyf...  "Caer" being "fortress" and "dyf" being a variant on the name of the river Taff[2], which is somewhat eponymous to the people of Wales, insofar as their nickname...

Abermaw was probably pronounced by the non-Welsh Brits as 'Ay-ber-maw' and through years of misheards and corruptions 'Ay' was dropped, 'ber' became 'bar' and maw means mouth, so...

That's just my guess anyway.


And I asked, it's Cardiganshire.

[MonkeyHead]

"Aber" in place names is a reflection of the fact that most (almost all) names in Welsh for places refer to a geographical location or are a geographical description of where the place is. "Aber" is the term for river (practically the last bit of it where it meets the sea -  the mouth) - so places like Aberystwyth (untranslated), Aberafan (Port Talbot in English... this one is actually a double as afon or afan is the word for River, so it actually means river mouth), Abertawe (Swansea in English) and so on all lie on eponymous river mouths (Ystwyth, Afan and Tawe). Other common Welsh place names have terms like "Pen" meaning top/head or end, "Bont" or "Pont" meaning bridge, "Cas" from "Castell" (the Ll is a letter of its own pronounced llch, so its not said anything like the English word) meaning Castle, "Llan" meaning church (same thing with the Ll). Map of places here in Welsh is pretty much 80% words based around those descriptors. This arose as before the Romans rocked up for the big fight around 1st C AD we didnt actually have organized settlements, so locations were simply descriptors, and this seems to have stuck, similar to english place names turned up to 11.

Most places have 2 names, an English one and a Welsh one which may or may not be similar depending on where they are and what history the place has (Swansea from the Viking term "Sveyn's Island", Abertawe from the river location). Often the English name is a translation (Pen-y-Bont into Bridgend, or sometimes a "simplification" of the Welsh into English (Wrecsam into Wrexham) A minority of places have only one - e.g Llandudno. We even have place names in Welsh different to the English for places accross the border (Llundain for London), often reflecting the fact that the UK was Celtic before the Romans, Saxons and Normans came to play. Some of the names, particularly towns and cities built many centuries after Celtic Britain are the same translation prcess in reverse - A "Welshification" of the English name (Lerpwll for Liverpool) or a translation (Rhydychen is a direct translation of Oxe Ford, i.e. Oxford).