Math is haaaard

[ysobel]

Well, not math, just the names for math.

In Welsh, anyway.

I don't mind the numbers, at least yet when we've mostly just done 1-10. I can't recall more than half of them -- un dau tri pedwar pump chwech saiyh wyth naw deg -- but I can recognize them. And the above-ten two-digit numbers seem to literally be, like, "three ten seven" for 37.

But today's lesson is the + ~ x % = words. Some of it is okay, by which I mean that I can remember that "math/sums" is symiau and "is equal to" is yn hafal i. And plus is okay, because that's adio. Tri adio un yn hafal i pedwar.

But I can. Not. Remember. The other three. It's not sticking from one sentence to the next, and I can't figure out any mnemonics or anything.

Subtract: Tynnu
Multiply: Lluosi
Divide: Rhannu

(I wrote it down here partly so I could get through the lesson but partly because writing makes things stick better, and I still ended up wanting to put lluosi for subtract. I *never* have this much trouble within a lesson. Remembering later, sure, but wtf brain.

Comments

[ephemera]

Is the initial T for "take away" Tynnu a possibly hook to hook on to? Rhannu, like "ran through" with a dividing symbol? *randomly free-associates at you sympathetically*

[ysobel]

Actually the Rhannu one might work. So far the best I've managed for tynnu is "the t has a crossbar like the minus sign, and also it isn't adding or dividing which have horizontal lines but are different words". And I guess faced with Lluosi I can use process of elimination, though that doesn't help with pure recall.

[cedara]

You know, Rhannu almost sounds like a person's name. ;-)

[ysobel]

Awkwardly, the way it's pronounced -- a as in cat, u as in eeeee, and an aspirated r that we don't have in English -- it kept sounding almost like tranny. :x (I suppose I could use "tranny is an offensive and divisive term, therefore rhannu is division" as my mnemonic, but that's just super awkward.)

(And yes, welsh pronunciation does mean that tynnu sounds like English "tinny", but that was no help)

[cedara]

Hee.