Having fun while speaking Welsh is the theme of this year’s Shwmae Su’mae campaign led by Mentrau Iaith Cymru. The event, which takes place annually on 15 October, is a national celebration of the Welsh language, wherever you live and whatever your level.
Whilst you’re here at Aberystwyth University, why not take advantage of some of the many special opportunities and resources available for learning Welsh?
Welsh courses delivered by Learn Welsh are free for Aberystwyth University students and staff. Find more information here: https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/learn-welsh/
To support your learning, the library has many thousands of Welsh-language resources for Welsh learners and speakers in our Celtic Collection. Here’s just a selection of what’s available on the library shelves.
We also have many Welsh-speaking or learning members of staff who can be identified by their orange lanyards. Felly rhowch gynnig ar siarad Cymraeg heddiw!
The first Shwmae Su’mae Day was held on 15 October, 2013 to promote the idea of starting every conversation in Welsh. The aim of the day is to show that Welsh belongs to everyone – fluent speakers, learners and those who feel their linguistic skills are a little rusty.
Literature in translation is a great way to get a glimpse of other cultures. Translated works are generally shelved with works in the original language, so if you are looking to broaden your reading horizons, don’t be afraid of exploring sections of languages you don’t speak (yet!).
If you have moved to Aberystwyth for study or work and don’t have knowledge of the Welsh language, translations found in in the Celtic Collection can be a good way into the literary culture of Wales. Classics of Welsh literature (Kate Roberts, Islwyn Ffowc Elis, Saunders Lewis, the Mabinogion) have been translated widely (including editions in French, German, Italian, in addition to English).
Contemporary Welsh language novels also find an international audience. Recently, Manon Steffan Ros’s novel, Llyfr Glas Nebo has already been translated into Polish, Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, Vietnamese, Turkish and Korean with translations into a dozen more languages in preparation. You can find the author’s own English translation of Llyfr Glas Nebo (The Blue Book of Nebo) shelved with the original in the Celtic Collection.
The Celtic Collection is inherently international in nature, featuring materials about and in the languages of Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, Cornwall and Mann. A particularly intriguing aspect of the collection is translations of works in other languages into Welsh. In the collection you can find works by Albert Camus (Y Dieithryn = L’Étranger), Jean-Paul Sartre (Caeëdig ddôr = Huis clos) Franz Kafka (Metamorffosis) among many others. Also, in Hugh Owen Library, Asterix the Gaul speaks Welsh and Irish and Tintin speaks Breton.
A university library is always a mirror of what is taught and researched at that institution. In addition to the eight languages that are taught between the departments of Modern Languages and Welsh & Celtic Studies, you will also find translations of literature from many other languages currently or previously researched at the university.
Today, 7 February, is Welsh Language Music Day – a day which celebrates all forms of Welsh Language music. Whether you’re into indie, rock, punk, funk, folk, electronica, hip hop or anything else, there’s incredible music being made in the Welsh language for you to discover. Find out more about the day here with links to Spotify playlists.
Our librarians have curated a Box of Broadcasts playlist of some of their favourite documentaries and performances to get you on track with music in Welsh
Early Modern Books covers material from the British Isles and Europe for the period 1450-1700. An integrated search across both Early English Books Online and Early European Books allows scholars to view materials from over 225 source libraries worldwide. EEBO’s content draws on authoritative short-title catalogues of the period and features many text transcriptions specially created for the product. Content from Europe covers the curated Early European Books Collections from 4 national libraries and London’s Wellcome Library.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a vast eighteenth-century library at your desktop—a fully text-searchable corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800. It currently contains over 180,000 titles amounting to over 32 million fully-searchable pages.
