Still here....

I haven't posted to either this blog or the welsh one for a little while - but this doesn't mean I have been doing no Welsh. I went to the Welsh summer school in Abergavenny at the end of July and had a really good week. And part of the benefit is in being able to buy more Welsh books, so I came away with a small pile, once again.

Gareth has lent me two books, one a novel and one of short stories. The novel is by Dafydd Llewelyn, entitled Tocyn I'r Nefoedd (ticket to heaven) and is both very funny and rather sad - an odd story about a minister in a very small conservative minded village who is pilloried for inadvertently having helped a family win the lottery - which enables them to take their daughter who has leukemia for treatment to the States. Sadly, the treatment does not work - and neither does his relationship (or job) work out - but for once the suggestion on the back cover that the reader will be crying and laughing in turn is not far from the truth.

I also finished Mared Lewis's Y Maison du Soleil - about relationships between a group of friends on their annual French holiday. And I have just finished Y Stryd (The Street) - a detective novel which was really good. And also Chris Cope's book about learning Welsh (Cwrw am Ddim) Perhaps more on that in another post.

I intend to really learn the new words as I go along - but often get caught up in the book itself though I often do go back and make a list of the translations I pencil in on the pages for the unknown words. I hope that by reading the new words in context I will remember them - but acquiring new vocabulary seems to take a long time.

It's often interesting though as I have noted before to see what the Welsh word for something is - take Barrister. It's literally "Bar - solicitor" - nice and easy to remember (assuming you know solicitor - bar is the same as in English as it happens).

So now I need to be disciplined to keep going not only on the reading but also on the vocabular and grammar as there will be a gap before the next course. There is a day school in Caernarfon I hope to get to in November and likewise in London - but that is a long way away.....