My Odyssean friend who often goes by the sobriquet “dung beattle” when commenting here has sent me a link to a charming site called Talk Tidy: The Online Home of Wenglish, based on two books by John Edwards:
John Edwards has made his lifetime study, the peculiarities of the Welsh/English dialect. He named this dialectical oddity “Wenglish” and recorded it as it is spoken, mainly in the valleys and townships of South Wales (that’s OLD South Wales for our antipodean visitors).
The original books Talk Tidy, and More Talk Tidy, were written in 1985 and 1986 respectively and published by D. Brown & sons Ltd, Bridgend, Glamorgan S. Wales, UK. Unfortunately, both books are now out of print.
A few samples:
Ach-a-fi
An expression of disgust as in “You should ‘ave seen the state ‘e was in, ach-a-fi!”
Against
A translation of the Welsh ‘yn erbyn’, meaning ‘by the time’ as in “Against I’d washed the dishes, there was no time to clean the house”.
Ages: Frages/’issages
‘Frages’ is Wenglish for ‘for ages’ and ‘issages’ is the Wenglish equivalent of ‘this ages’: “I haven’t seen you frages.”, or “I haven’t been to the pictures ‘issages.”.
Anch/Ansh
A bite, or taste, as in, “Give us an anch of your apple will you?”
Aye-aye
(a) The single ‘aye’ is Wenglish for ‘yes’. The double form is often used as a greeting or as a reply to ‘shw mai?’, ‘awright?’, or ‘hi-ya?’ (b) Affirmative or most positive confirmation, as in “Well aye-aye mun, he’s right enough there you know!”
Awww, and here I was hoping that “Wenglish” stood for a Wendish/English pidgin.
Thanks for this link: I’m from that neck of the woods & grew up speaking a kind of watered-down Wenglish. I remember seeing the ‘Talk Tidy’ books when they came out & it’s good to see they’re online now.
Interesting. However, I wouldn’t say all of it is characteristically Wenglish. From slang I remember from my childhood (southern UK), a good proportion of it comes across as pretty standard 1950s-60s working class colloquial English: for instance, all taken away (= hysterectomy), bag of nerves, bathers (= swimming costume), beanfeast, bloke, botched, cap it all, dribs and drabs, etc.
Far-far away from you (Moscow, Russia). Looking for your help: trying to compare English Celtiс (Irish, Scottish, Wenglish) dialects to find out possible convergences/divergenes. No money interest, just fond of English Continuum. It’s my “first second language”. My latest challenge is Welsh English. I Loves It. Yet, I ain’t got no direct hyperlinks to robust online translators. The downloaded articles and dictionaries are of no use. If you’d be so kind, some 20 general words and phrases in the Welsh Dialect: about a party, about a duty, about dating.
Well, the linked site has plenty of words and phrases; if you go to the archived link, you’ll see this on the left:
Click on as many of the letters as you like and you’ll get lots of examples. But perhaps one of our Welsh or Welsh-adjacent commenters will have something to add.