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Ar Lafar BlogPoet and presenter Ifor ap Glyn takes us on a journey the length and breadth of Wales to record and celebrate the wealth of Welsh dialects in the series Ar Lafar.
In a new eight-part series, we hear how Welsh is spoken today as Ifor travels from Gwynedd to Gwent, Pembrokeshire to Powys and Rhondda to Rhos. Ifor meets people who speak the various dialects in their native areas and gets further background and history from a range of experts.
The show Noson Ar Lafar is broadcast the same evening, and is an opportunity to hear some of Wales' most popular artistes performing in dialect in front of local audiences. The first evening comes from Caernarfon Football Cub where actors Mari Gwilym and Dewi Rhys introduce us to the Cofi dialect.
These evenings will also feature songs and videos, many of which come from the extensive archive at the Museum of Welsh Life in St Fagans. The series also visits the Rhondda with Pobol y Cwm favourites Gaynor Morgan Rees and Shelley Rees; Ceredigion in the company of Ryland Teifi and Elen Pencwm; and the Swansea Valley with Rhian Morgan and Phyl Harris, amongst a number of other locations.
In the Ar Lafar series, Ifor starts his journey in Caernarfon with the Cofi dialect but his journey also takes him to St Fagans and the Fishguard area of Pembrokeshire. After discussing some traditional Caernarfon words - such as miglo (disappearing) giaman (cat) and slymio (courting) - and some more recent additions such as 'jaman' (shame), he learns how dialects are recorded for posterity with one of the Museum of Welsh Life's field workers, Roy Saer. Together they visit Pembrokeshire where Roy first recorded dialect in 1963.
During the series, Ifor will try to discover where exactly the border lies between north and south Walian Welsh accents, and learns more about the distinctive dialects of Pembrokeshire, Montgomeryshire and Rhosllannerchrugog. He will try to establish what sort of Welsh people spoke before the tape recorder was invented? How much impact is the English language and the education system having on the way we speak Welsh? And what's the future for our dialects?
© 2012 S4C
O Gymru / Made in Wales