Re: Lico, leicio, licio, hoffi, coffi. Was: Okay, so it *didn't* work

Sally Caves <scaves@...> writes:

> From: Elliott Lash <AL260@...>
>
[snippage]

> > Minor point:
> > it's leicio or licio, I don't think lico is a word.
>
> It sure is:  Wy'n lico coffi.  Swansea dialect.  There are
> several Welsh dialects, and perhaps more "correct" ones,
> but Swansea is where I studied.  Of course I didn't see
> it spelled, but that's the way it was pronounced.  Strictly
> pub talk.
I guess I never encountered that dialect. I've been looking at General Northern
and General Southern, since that's what my book (an exellent huge book:
Reference Grammar of Welsh), looks at.

The book goes into dialectal forms, and disregards totally the prescriptivist
traditionalism of the Welsh that is taught in schools. The table for the
present of the verb Bod therefore, is HUGE, since it shows dialectal variation
as well as interogative etc. forms (and of course no stupid "yr wyf i" lol)

> > But Welsh also retains the original Celtic word: Hoffi "to like", for use
> in some circumstances.
>
> And I remember the Welsh of Swansea sneering at it as a
> northern convention, and a "rhyme" all the traditional school
> books use: Yr wyf i'n hoffi coffi! "I like coffee!  Ha ha ha ha!"
>
I'd say "dw i'n hoffi coffi" (lol) at least if I said that at all. You're probably
right that it's not much used, but I'm sure the Reference Grammar said
somewhere that there's a specific construction where Hoffi is needed. oh well.

:)
Elliott

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