BBC - Cymru'r Byd - Hafan - I don't often say it but this site is way cool.
Most of my family speak Welsh as a first language. However since I was raised in England by parents who felt it was more important to grow up speaking English using received pronunciation, I never learned any Welsh as a child (beyond a few key words to help find out what I'd be getting for Xmas when it was being discussed - in Welsh - in front of me).
However, this site, launched yesterday, looks like it will really help non-Welsh speakers like me. Rather than having to cut and paste chunks of text into Babelfish for a translation, visitors to the BBC Cymru web site only need to mouse over the specific words they don't know and "Vocab" - the BBC's new server-side program - will pop up a translation on the spot. It's almost possible to read a whole sentence in English simply by passing your mouse along the line.
Best of all, the BBC is a public body and won't be putting the software up for sale. They're giving it away for free instead.
I'm feeling better and better about my license fee right now.
Now if I can just stop my mother from finding out how much more Welsh I've learned before Xmas....
posted at 11:37 AM
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