Moved to music section as suggested by various posters.
joe clone

Whenever I read a novel which has place names or proper names in a language I don't know, I always try to figure out how to pronounce them, properly. I've just finished a good yarn called "Simeon's Bride" written by Alison G. Taylor; a murder mystery which takes place in Wales.

Would any of you who are Welsh and/or know how to speak it, please help me out? Here's some of them:

Dewi Prys (one Mudcatter has told me this would be "Dew ee Prees" and normally would be a first name. In the book they are used as a first and last name.)

Also, there is a reference, when one character goes from the west towards Derbyshire (if that's not made up for the book,) up into the Pennines "through Buxton, and into a town distinguished by street after street of Victorian terraced houses, by tall old mills standing foursquare and turreted behind high walls, and by its inhabitants,remnants of invading Saxon hordes, their voices grating, words fouled by flat "a"s and mysterious dialect."

What is meant by "flat 'a's etc.?"

Also, maybe not strictly Welsh, but has anyone ever heard of rubbing stone treads with paraffin to put a sheen on their surface? Or, soured milk if one were too poor to use precious paraffin?

I was also interested in reading a small reference to a Welsh martyr, William Davies, who apparently pissed(US) off QE the First. I can look him up on google, but would still like to hear anything you'd like to share.

I was a bit shocked to see "Nigger" used in the following and wondered if it had a different meaning than I've ever known. (The book was published in 1995.):

..because John Jones was the fly in the psychiatrist's soothing balm, the nasty Nigger poking his head up from the great woodpile of rationalizations and justifications and defences for the indefensible.

Have any of you been to the Menai Straits and/or the Great Orme? What does "Orme" mean?

It would be great fun to learn more about Wales and its culture. I plan to look for more books by Taylor.

Thanks a bunch!

kat