You like pot-ay-to and I like pot-ah-to
You like tom-ay-to and I like tom-ah-to
Pot-ay-to, pot-ah-to, Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to
Let’s call the whole thing off.
The challenges that can occur between British and American English have got nothing on the challenges of Welsh and English.
I defy anyone but a Welsh speaker to say correctly the seemingly simple name of the harbour at “Porthgain”. Or the name of the beautiful ‘hidden’ valley that lies behind Fishguard and Newport, the “Gwaun” valley.
Of course “Fishguard” and “Newport” are English creations. In Welsh, Fishguard is “Abergwaun” meaning, quite reasonably, the “mouth of the River Gwaun”; Newport is “Trefdraeth” meaning: “town by the beach” – by the beach, notice, not the port. In fact, the harbour and the beach are separated by the estuary of the River Nevern. If you want to go to the harbour, you’ll need to look out for the tight left turn as you enter Newport, signposted “Parrog”; for the beach, you’ll need to drive through Newport then turn left following signs for the Golf Course. Clear?
Goodwick, the ferry port, is “Wdig”, the ‘W’ like that in ‘cwm’ in “Cwm Rhondda”, or Rhondda Valley. I learned how to pronounce “cwm” as an 8-year old, the year Hilary and Tenzing climbed Everest via the Western Cwm (“koom” but with a quite short “oo”) the wide valley that runs up to the Lhotse Face. It was named by George Mallory, but why he chose a Welsh word I do not know.
You’ll know your journey is nearing its end when you reach the small village of “Scleddau” just outside Fishguard. You might as well accept that as a non-Welsh-speaker, you’ll not get your tongue around that one easily. Just drive on until you see the left turn off the A40 as you leave the village.
Which brings us conveniently, as they say, to Tremarchog – the Knight’s Place – or St Nicholas as the English, rather unimaginatively, called it at some point.
And so to Tŷ’r Sgwlyn, an enquiry about the spelling set off this whole place-names thing. What names should we adopt for the website? English or Welsh? And how should we spell them?
Louise got some advice from a friend.
“The spellings ‘schoolin’ and ‘sgwlin’ are both Victorian versions, which were typical of the time, of course. They say that the reason why so many Welsh words and place names at that time were written in anglicised form was that the only person capable of answering questions asked by Ordnance Survey officials when they were trying to create maps was the local vicar. And he invariably spoke no Welsh (the Welsh people were not Church goers of course: they would be good non-conformist Chapel goers!) So the Ordnance Survey fellows expressed the Welsh words and names as they heard them in English.
So, in modern Welsh orthography you would write ‘Tŷ’r Sgwlyn’. You are right to assume that the ‘y’ in ‘Tŷ’ needs a circumflex, and the apostrophe before the ‘R’ is absolutely correct. Now, that’s your lesson for tonight!”
So we took a very pragmatic decision for this website. If the place-name was Welsh, we would do our best to spell it correctly in Welsh. For all other place names, we would use the one most well-known to tourists and visitors, like us, like you.