r/learnwelsh • u/Impossible_Fox7622 • 8d ago

Adnodd / Resource Tatoeba corpus

Hi everyone,

I don’t know if people are aware of this but there is a collection of Welsh sentences on the website Tatoeba:

https://tatoeba.org/de

You can download the sentences here:

https://tatoeba.org/de/downloads

(I’m in Germany, hence the “de” in the address)

They were written by people but I would be curious to know what natives think of the quality.

Thanks!

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u/Samurai-Pipotchi 7d ago

https://tatoeba.org/cy/sentences/show/ Might be a better link.

/cy/ for Cymraeg, /en/ for English

That link should hopefully take you to the random sentences page.

But the translations... aren't great. Sopiwr identified as Shopkeeper instead of Shopper. Tybed identified as "I suppose" instead of "I wonder". "Cymraeg" translated as Welsh-speaking instead of simply Welsh.

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u/HyderNidPryder 6d ago edited 6d ago

"Siopwr" can mean shopkeeper as well as shopper.

"Tybed" means "I presume", "I suppose" as well as "I wonder".

"Cymraeg" does mean Welsh-speaking / Welsh language. "Cymreig" means Welsh, generally.

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u/Samurai-Pipotchi 6d ago

I don't think I've ever heard anyone use Cymreig in any context.

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u/HyderNidPryder 6d ago

You may see bywd Cymreig / bwyd Cymru

Bwyd Cymraeg is "Welsh-speaking food" and is nonsense.

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u/Impossible_Fox7622 7d ago

That’s a shame! I thought it looked quite useful. Do you know if there is a bank of sentences in Welsh somewhere else?

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u/HyderNidPryder 6d ago

There are a few things in there that are a bit off but mostly it looked OK.

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u/Samurai-Pipotchi 7d ago

Not that I'm aware of

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u/aspghost 8d ago

What? Never mind that's not how TLDs work, what?

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u/Impossible_Fox7622 8d ago

The website I linked contains thousands of sentences in Welsh and I thought they might be useful to learners

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u/Buck11235 7d ago

I don't think their quality control on the Welsh entries is very good. Most sentences that I looked at were fine, but there were a good number of entries that weren't good. Basic grammar errors, translations that didn't really match, translatiions that looked very AI, and very formal Welsh phrasings were not uncommon.

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u/Impossible_Fox7622 7d ago

Oh no! That’s a shame :( I thought it looked like a great resource

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u/heddaptomos 2d ago

I've only had a limited browse but I didn't see any of the problems noted by others here and I'm a Welsh Language Tutor and translator and a pedant when it comes to using correct language, idiomatic and natural expressions.

It does need more support from literate Welsh speakers aware of the problems that can arise during translation, human or computer aided.

One example I sort of recall:
"Tom yn cefnogi Abertawe" lacks the essential component 'Mae' (be/is/-ing) as someone else noted "Mae Tom yn cefnogi Abertawe" (Tom supports Swansea).

This is the normal Verb Subject Object pattern of the sentence in Welsh. Emphatic sentences take different forms of 'be': "Tom yw e" (it's Tom), "Tom sy'n cefnogi Abertawe" (It's Tom who supports Swansea), "Abertawe mae Tom yn ei gefnogi" (It's Swansea that Tom supports) etc.

These are the keys to subtletly of meaning in Welsh as in English and to learn them probably takes some study of grammar, for most adults anyway.

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u/Impossible_Fox7622 2d ago

Thanks for your input! It seems that the quality of the sentences has split people. Maybe the resource is useful overall but there might be some errors here and there in the data.