Welsh Vocab

[jarethrake]

Nos da

Good night.  'Nos' is 'night', 'da' is good.

Nos da i chi

"Goodnight to you".  A possible reply to good night.  The more formal, polite form.

Nos da i ti

The personal form of "goodnight to you".  Reserved for friends, family and lovers.

Other languages - such as French - has more personal forms of address, such as 'vous' and 'tu'.  In English,

Comments

[peredur_glyn]

Everything you say is fine, apart from the picks I nit below.

The personal form of "goodnight to you". Reserved for friends, family and lovers.

This is (still) what most Welsh grammars say, but the reality of the use of ti is rather more complex. I would indeed use ti with friends and, um, lovers, and with certain members of my family, but not all. I might use chi to my grandmother, for example, and to relatives from the next generation up whom I don't know that well.

But I use ti with people I don't know well at all, as long as I perceive them to be on roughly the same level as me somehow (or below), either in terms of age or 'standing' (career-wise, etc.). So pretty much anyone below 35 or so I would have no problem using ti with after exchanging a few sentences with them, and the same goes for my colleagues at work, even if they are rather older than me, but not with my boss or anyone on my boss's level or above (unless we get to know one another better on a social level, which has indeed happened with some lecturers in the

[jarethrake]

I technically know the stuff about the f and y, but that's one I'd heard in full, rather than in peices, and I focused on the later bits.

So the chi/ti is a little more like the hi/hello divide, if we were really fussy about it?

Diloch, btw.

I think I got that one right.

[peredur_glyn]

So the chi/ti is a little more like the hi/hello divide, if we were really fussy about it?

I don't think it's comparable, to be honest. I would say 'hi' to people I don't know at all, and 'hello' to my best friend. The ti/chi thing is not just to do with formality, but more to do with what kind of relationship you want to have with them (it's part of a much larger, scarier concept called accommodation theory).

The best thing for a learner to do is to call people you know well ti (or people who invite you to use this form with them), and everyone else chi until they tell you otherwise.

Diloch, btw.

A typo? It's diolch :) Pronounce DEE-yolch. (The l is often dropped in casual speech.)

[peredur_glyn]

BTW, I'm only being hideously picky because I can see that you're putting an effort into learning, and want you to make the best of it. You've picked up an admirable amount in such a short time :)

[jarethrake]

I'm 1/16 Welsh and I like Howl's Moving Castle.

That, and the best stories come from Wales.

[jarethrake]

I'm also 1/32 Irish on the other side, half Indian, and the rest is English. Stratford, more specifically.

You could claim I have great writing in my blood. Or just greatness.

I could be the descendant of Merlin (and Arthur, if we're going by the cousins theory) and Shakespeare.

Not likely, but just about possible.