Yr Afr Sanctaidd

I went to bed 3 hours ago and then gave it up as a bad job. Far too anxious about the by-election. I really, really hope Chris Davies gets voted out, fuck his smug, criminally fraudulent face.

I can't wait to have a female MP who's not part of the self-satisfied landowner tradition in this constituency, (really the last Lib Dem MP Roger Williams was just a Tory by another name) although I won't look forward to hearing all the casual misogyny that also gets thrown at Kirsty Williams (our AM)

It's been weird having all this focus on us, we're not North or South Wales, and generally when people talk about Mid Wales, they're talking about the coast - normally Aberystwyth. I can't remember ever having a candidate doorstopping on our road before, but this election we've had multiple visits from both Lib Dems and Torys. One from Chris Davis himself. I'd wanted to argue with him, but when I opened the door and wrangled the dog, I found myself so angry at everything his government has done, and everything he supports I ended up telling him "Don't bother, you're a convicted fraudster" and slamming the door in his face. How dare he come to my house and expect me to vote for him. (So angry I was shaking, this government has killed people and is going to kill more).

I can't even think about what it means for Brexit, it makes me sick. (I know people here who are really, really against Brexit but are voting for Chris Davies because the media has been unfair to him/ the Lib Dems have had their knives into him. Fuck them too)

Oh fuck I really hope he loses.

I went for a short walk with thelovelystick yesterday, where we both tried out our new walking poles. (They're the same poles, after thelovelystick showed the downside to one click ordering on the iPad when I was showing her the new poles I'd bought, and the cancel order button refused to work)

They certainly seem effective for distributing the work more evenly through your body, and hopefully they'll be helpful in the event of another descent down the Hay Bluff, when I had my feet slip out from under me twice, and ended up having to walk through Hay covered in mud.

I'm heading off to work shortly, as my boss phoned me at about 9 o clock last night, asking if I can come in today. Three days paid work instead of two? Of course I can. ;-) (Plus we're currently using the Bazillian Blend coffee instead of the Formula Six, and I've found I like it even more than the Formula Six which I didn't think was possible. So free coffee!)

So for Three Weeks for Dreamwidth shanaqui is hosting the FONSFAQ for Wales. (The Prompts and Claims post)

As I am learning Welsh, I offered do a basic welsh post, but before doing that I thought it would probably be helpful to do a guide to pronunciation, given that seems to be one of the things people find scariest about welsh.

Welsh has a different alphabet to English, it has letters that English doesn't (ch, dd etc) and a lot of of the letters that look the same are pronounced differently. (ie u & w). Bwrw, gŵr and sgwd are a lot easier to say when you don't try to pronounce w as in the english alphabet. (In Welsh w is a vowel)

The emphasis also falls in a different place. In any word with two or more syllables the emphasis falls on the penultimate syllable. For instance -

Fron¦cys¦yll¦te
Ys¦trad¦meu¦rig
Caer¦gu¦bi (Because the emphasis falls on the gu, the u is pronounced differently to how it is normally. More as the u in cup is pronounced).

A circumflex (ˆ) on a vowel means you lengthen the sound.

a - mam - as in apple
b - mab
c - car - hard as in cat and cot, not soft as in cereal and celery
ch - chi - as in loch
d - da
dd - dda - th as in the and leather
e - de - open as in men, but not delight
f - saf - v as veil
ff - saff - as in difference
g - gan - always a hard g as in got, not giraffe
ng - ng - as in sing
h - hon
i - ci - as ink or ee in seek, not time
j - garej
l - lan
ll - lle - My text book says “prepare to say l, then blow really hard making a sound like a dentist’s suction pipe, blowing out!” this may or may not be useful to you
m - man
n - ni
o - to, toc as in order and floor, not open
p - pen
ph - phen - as in physics
r - car - as in English but more rolling
rh - rhif - start saying the r and then say the h over it
s - saff - as in English. However si (as in siop) is always pronounced sh unless it is the word si in which case it is pronounced sea
t - ti
th - beth - as in things.
u - un - as in tree, so that pump (welsh for five) is pronounced pimp
w - pwll - as in blue and pool
y - dyn - as in bean
-- - llyn - as in pin
-- - Cymru - as in cup

ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh, and th are one letter in welsh. Which is important if you ever do a welsh crossword.

So I grew up thinking that this was a word everybody knew irrespective of whether they were welsh or not, but seeing as I've now had a fourth person who's just recently* moved to Wales ask me what an eisteddfod is, I'm not so sure. So any excuse for a DW poll hey?



The best thing about the Bristol Eisteddfod was that three years running I got to hit Sarah Jones with a foam-stuffed sock truncheon. (We were friends in that 'we'd hate each other but there's no one else to be friends with' way.)

Please feel free to link to your friends as I'd love to get as many people answering as possible.

Yno, cynhaliwyd ymryson, a gwahoddwyd beirdd a cherddorion o bob cwr o'r wlad i gystadlu yn erbyn ei gilydd.

* recently, as in within the last couple of years. ie more recently than me.