Book - D.I.Y. Welsh - Paperback

ISBN: 9781785622151 (1785622153)

Publication Date: 30 July 2019

Publisher: Gomer@Lolfa

Format: Paperback, 210x150 mm, 112 pages

Language: Bilingual (Welsh and English)

A step-by-step guide to building your own Welsh sentences, with exercises and glossary. Reprint. First Published in March 2018.

A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council:-

This little book is an introduction to the grammar of written Welsh for those who may be daunted by grammar, unsure perhaps as to what an adjective or an adverb is, or a pronoun or a preposition, even in their mother tongue.

With this in mind, the book is colour-coded, so the reader has an immediate visual understanding as to which part of speech is being addressed – nouns, for example, are either pink (for feminine nouns) or blue (for masculine ones), while adjectives are orange, and verbs in the infinitive (referred to here as ‘verb-nouns’) are green.

Geraint Lewis begins with the basics of the Welsh alphabet and the intricacies of the soft mutation, with easy-to-follow exercises, and then a list of common nouns, colour-coded to help the reader distinguish between, and memorise, which are masculine and which are feminine.

D.I.Y. Welsh continues in this way, taking us step by step through the formation of sentences, the conjugation of verbs, prepositions (a minefield in any language) and the mutations they can trigger. There is a whole section devoted to numerals and telling the time, and a colour-coded mini Welsh-English/English-Welsh dictionary. A very useful appendix lists, in table form, ‘The little words and the mutations they trigger’ – conjunctions, prepositions, numerals, etc.

There are, of course, many grammars on the market these days, but D.I.Y. Welsh approaches the intricacies of the language in what is, so far as I know, a novel and innovative way. Welsh has a reputation for being ‘difficult’ among English-speakers. In reality, once you have understood the basics of certain unfamiliar features, such as the mutations, it is no more difficult than any other European language. Geraint Lewis’s book takes the reader through these features step by step in a very clear and concise way. It is not a grammar that would suit everyone, but it will be invaluable for readers who are put off the very notion of grammar and I can see it as being very useful, for example, in schools where Welsh is taught as a second language.