Before I went to North Wales, I decided to learn a few basic phrases in Welsh - you know the sort of thing: "Hello","Goodbye", "Thank you very much", "Can you explain Kantian philosophy in the post-modernistic world?", if only because I think it is at the very least courtious to at least make the attempt - even though you might well have to drop back to English after a few phrases and, yes, I believe that it was appreciated ...
Anyway with some help from colleagues from Cardiff & Bridgend I learnt that "Goodbye" was "Da Boch Chi" (I also knew that a less formal way was "Hwyl fawr") so I decided to say that in a Welsh language book shop in Caernarfon.
"Don't know that round here ...." came the instant reply (in English) ...
A couple of days later I repeated the exercise but, this time was able to discuss it.
Apparently "Da Boch Chi" (pronounced "Dar Bock Key") is taught in Welsh language courses - especially in South Wales - as the formal way of saying Goodbye but no one actually uses it!
Additionally it seems that it is, in any case, restricted to S. Wales Welsh which I am assured is very different to the language (both written and spoken) that is to be found in N. Wales.
Even nicer the commonest way of saying goodbye in N Wales in "Tarra "....
Anyway, firstly,if someone could correct me on this I would be very grateful and secondly: my apologies to all those Welsh speakers to whom I spoke for mangling their language ...
3 comments:
S'mae, I'm learning welsh at the moment over the internet on the bbc wensite. Its brill. The best way to say goodbye that they surggest is 'Hwyl.' its brilliant and interactive. I've learn't so much in just one lesson on how to say hello, goodbye and introduce myself!!
Hi. I found your blog post at random and thought I'd write a reply, even though it is a few years old.
I did an ever increasing proportion of my primary/secondary education in Wales through Welsh, earlier on in bilingual schools in the North, then in Welsh language schools in the South from 8 years old onwards until 18.
"Da boch chi", or "da bo chi" which you seem to get more hits for from google, is apparently quite an old phrase. I don't remember ever being specifically tought it or ever using it.
The page http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_da_bo_chi_mean says that it is a contraction of "Duw bu efoch chi" - "God be with you" - I was in fact researching the phrase this evening as I came across it and it occurred to me that I didn't know what the words meant. I'm not sure if one way or the other writen above would be the correct way to write it, but as it is a contraction it perhaps doesn't matter so much. The majority of people will know/use "hwyl" and "hwyl fawr".
I'd also like to point out that South and North Wales Welsh are not really very different. The difference isn't quite superficial, but it is the same engine under the bonnet. As a child, switching from North to South Wales Welsh was not a big deal. Some of the difference is pronunciation, some is a bit more subtle, some verb suffixes are a bit different, and sometimes it is as simple as what contractions are more commonly used (imagine "they are not" contracting to "they're not" or "they aren't", both of which I hope are correct...) Often it was the case of just adopting an alternative word for something.
Further, I don't think "Tara" is a Welsh word - I think it is from informal English as it is used all over the place (England, Wales, probably Scotland, maybe Ireland...) Many Southern Welsh that I know use it.
Anyway, I hope that helps - I could be wrong about some of the nitty gritty as I'm not really a linguist, but that is how things seem from my experience.
Dymuniadau gorau.
An old post, but...
'Da bo' and 'Da bo chi' are quite widely used, slightly formal ways of saying goodbye. 'Hwyl', 'Hwyl fawr', 'Hwyl nawr', 'Hwyl am y tro' and so on are very widely used and more colloquial. A matter of personal style, really.
A loose translation of 'Da bo chi' might be 'May it be well with you'. A strict word for word translation between English and Welsh (or between any other two languages) does not really work very well, though.
To go from 'Da bo chi' back to the supposed 'Duw bu efoch chi' sounds rather doubtful from a number of points of view.
And as JPM has written, the differences between the various Welsh dialects (and it is much more complicated than 'North' and 'South') are not really that great in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Accents in Welsh vary quite a lot across Wales, though, just as they do in English across all of Britain, and sometimes over quite small distances.
Cofion,
MCC
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