“So do you speak Welsh then?” - the question crops up at every university party, holiday abroad and basically any time you decide to venture over the Prince of Wales bridge.
And as you skeptically nod your head you are usually bombarded with floods of questions.
There is something about the Welsh language that seems to fascinate those of us who have not grown up in Wales.
But if you are a fluent Welsh speaker here are some of the things you’ll probably have experienced before.
1. You continue to refer to your school years as Meithrin, Derbyn, Blwyddyn 7, Chweched
2. And still struggle to translate words you used every day in school like ffreuter, gwyddoniaeth and gampfa
3. The rapping talents of Rapsgaliwn made more of an impact on your life than Eminem and Jay-Z
4. No words struck fear into your core quite like a teacher shouting ‘rhag dy gywilydd di’
5. And when someone says ‘bore da,’ you have to refrain from automatically answering ‘bore da Mrs Jones, bore da ffrindiau’
6. Never have you said ‘dydw i ddim eisiau’ because ‘sae moen’ is just so much easier
7. Any time you hear someone say the phrase ‘gyd o’ you respond with ‘Gydo yw bachgyn bach o’r Eidal’
8. You spoke English to your friends at school because speaking Welsh 'wasn't cool'
9. But now you're older you understand that speaking Welsh is actually so much cooler
10. Any social gathering with non-Welsh people involves being nagged ‘Go on, say something in Welsh’
11. But you never learn how to answer with dignity and seem to forget every word in the Welsh dictionary
12. Your non-Welsh friend then interjects “I know some Welsh, I can say 'popty ping' and 'fi’n hoffi coffi'”
13. In your eyes, Wenglish should be recognised as an official language with legal status
14. Because when in doubt you simply stick an ‘o’ on the end of an English word and hope for the best
15. After appearing on S4C for three seconds you're still shocked no one asked you for your autograph
16. You've competed in the Urdd Eisteddfod at least once
17. And got more than a tad starstruck when meeting this guy
18. How this woman hasn’t received a damehood yet is beyond you
19. Despite your best efforts trying to explain what the words ‘cwtch’ and ‘hiraeth’ mean you just can’t seem to do them justice
20. Anyone who dares utter the sentence ‘Welsh is a dying language’ better be ready for battle
21. Because you know that some Welsh words make way more sense than English ones
22. Reading Harry Potter in Welsh, you couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the translations
23. Nothing will ever beat the achievement of memorising ‘am, ar, at, dan, dros, drwy, wrth, gan, heb, hyd, i, o’
24. Even if no-one can ever agree on how to say it
25. More than once you have been asked ‘what does yacky da mean?’
26. And you are so sick of pronouncing LlanfairPG to an audience of onlookers
27. There is nothing quite like the thrill of hearing someone else speak Welsh when you are abroad
28. And you have to go up to them for a little 'sgwrs'
29. You’ve had to explain that ‘Nadolig Llawen’ actually has nothing to do with Clarins
30. Once or twice you've been guilty of switching to Welsh when trying to discreetly talk about someone
31. Nothing will ever haunt your dreams quite like learning 15 poems for your Welsh Literature GCSE
32. You can't believe that people have never heard the stories behind Cofiwch Dryweryn, Gwenllian or Llywelyn ein Llyw Olaf
33. So you turn the conversation into a Welsh history lesson that your old teacher Mr Thomas would be proud of
