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Glossary.

Plain definitions of every Tiwtor term — and the Welsh-learning vocabulary you'll bump into along the way. Skim it, search it, or jump in by letter.

29 termsTiwtorWelshMethod

A

Audio
Tiwtor
Every phrase in Tiwtor is voiced in your chosen dialect. Today most of that audio is high-quality AI speech, tuned with a Welsh pronunciation dictionary so the rhythm, contractions and sounds land naturally — not a robotic, word-by-word readout. We're replacing the audio in our official collections with recordings from real Welsh speakers as and when we can afford to.
See also Listening exercise.

B

Bookmark
Tiwtor
A flag you can put on any phrase to come back to it later. Your bookmarks behave like a phrase list of their own — you can drill them, generate a listening exercise from them, or just keep them as a “phrases I love” pile.
See also Phrase list.
Bore da
Welsh — BOR-eh dahWelsh
“Good morning.” Literally “morning good” — Welsh puts the adjective after the noun. One of the first phrases you'll meet in Cymraeg Byw, and one you'll hear constantly in any Welsh-speaking context.

C

Collection
Tiwtor
The top-level container in Tiwtor: a set of folders, phrase lists and listening exercises, curated by us (e.g. Cymraeg Byw) or created by you. Add one to your library and its phrases start showing up in your reviews. We say collection rather than course deliberately — there's no fixed syllabus and no lesson one. Dip in wherever's useful.
See also Folder, Phrase list.
Cymraeg
Welsh — kuhm-RAH-igWelsh
The Welsh language, in Welsh. (Welsh people in Welsh are Cymry, and Wales is Cymru.) You'll see it everywhere — “Cymraeg” on signs, on shop windows, on the school gate.
Cymraeg Byw
Welsh — kuhm-RAH-ig BIH-oohWelsh
“Living Welsh” — a phrase historically used to describe a register of Welsh closer to how people actually speak, as opposed to Cymraeg Llenyddol (literary Welsh) or formal written forms. Also the name of our flagship free collection, which leans into that meaning: 972 phrases across the situations you'll actually find yourself in.
See also Collection.

D

Dialect
Welsh
The two big regional varieties of spoken Welsh — Northern (Gwynedd, Anglesey, north Powys) and Southern (Glamorgan, Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire). They share a written standard but differ in vocabulary, pronunciation and common contractions. “I want” is dwi isio in the north, fi'n moyn in the south. You pick one when you sign up and learn it consistently; Tiwtor never mixes the two in a lesson.
See also Northern Welsh, Southern Welsh.
Difficulty range
Tiwtor
A two-handle numeric slider used when generating phrases with AI. Set the lower handle to skip too-easy phrases you already know, and the upper handle to keep the AI from running away with vocabulary you haven't met yet. The Easy / Medium / Hard presets are just convenient defaults on top of this slider.
Diolch
Welsh — DEE-olchWelsh
“Thanks.” Often heard intensified as diolch yn fawr (“thank you very much”) or doubled up as diolch yn fawr iawn. The ch is the same throat-clearing sound as in Scottish loch.

F

Flashcard
Method
A two-sided study card — prompt on the front, answer on the back. In Tiwtor, each flashcard is one phrase: native language on the front, Welsh on the back along with a literal translation and any alternative phrasings. The four ratings (Again / Hard / Good / Easy) feed the spaced-repetition scheduler.
See also Spaced repetition.
Folder
Tiwtor
An organisational grouping inside a collection. A folder gathers related phrase lists and listening exercises — e.g. “In the café” might be a folder containing four phrase lists and three listening exercises.
FSRS
Method
Free Spaced Repetition Scheduler — the modern spaced-repetition algorithm Tiwtor uses to decide when each phrase comes back. For every card it tracks two values: stability (how durable the memory is) and difficulty (how hard the phrase is for you). From those it predicts your retrievability and schedules the next review for the moment it'll do the most good. It's the successor to older algorithms like SM-2.
See also Retrievability, Spaced repetition.

I

Interval
Method
The time the scheduler waits before showing you a phrase again. New phrases come back in minutes; well-learned ones might not appear for weeks. The interval next to each rating button tells you what you're buying when you tap it.
See also FSRS, Spaced repetition.

L

Listening exercise
Tiwtor
A short chat-bubble conversation built around a specific phrase list, voiced in your chosen dialect. The phrases aren't reproduced word-for-word — they're varied slightly to fit naturally, which is the point: you have to recognise the phrase, not match it. Toggle text on or off, slow it down, repeat any line.
See also Phrase list, Audio.
Literal translation
Tiwtor
The word-by-word reading of a phrase, shown alongside the natural translation. For example: “It's raining” → “Mae'n bwrw glaw” → literally “It is hitting rain.” Useful because the literal often reveals the grammar pattern; once you see it, you can build similar phrases yourself. Tiwtor only shows one when it differs meaningfully from the natural translation.

M

Mutation
Welsh — also treigladWelsh
The feature of Welsh (and other Celtic languages) where the first consonant of a word changes depending on what came before it. Cath (cat) becomes gath after fy (my): fy nghath. Three types — soft, nasal and aspirate — triggered by different grammatical contexts. Tiwtor's Grammar Groove collection drills them by repetition rather than by memorising the rules.

N

Northern Welsh
Welsh
The dialect spoken across Gwynedd, Anglesey and the north of Powys. Tends to use dwi for “I am”, isio for “want”, 'di for “have”. Contraction-heavy; “I haven't seen him today” compresses to “Dwi'm 'di weld o heddiw”.
See also Dialect.

P

Particle
Welsh
A small grammatical word that has no English equivalent on its own but changes the meaning of the phrase around it. Welsh leans heavily on these: yn marks the present tense, wedi marks the perfect, ddim marks negation. Together they make sentences feel like building blocks — once you've drilled the particles, you can swap nouns and verbs freely.
Phrase
Tiwtor
The atomic unit in Tiwtor — a word, sentence or fragment that pairs a native-language version with a Welsh one, plus optional literal translation and audio. Every phrase lives in a phrase list, and every phrase has its own memory state.
Phrase list
Tiwtor
A grouping of phrases that you study together — the smallest unit of “a thing to learn”. A phrase list might be 8 phrases (“Saying hello”) or 40 (“Top-shelf insults”). One listening exercise can draw on one or more phrase lists.
Never: “deck”, “topic” or “collection”. The word is “phrase list”, because it is — quite literally — a list of phrases.

Q

Queue (new / learning / learned)
Tiwtor
Every phrase sits in one of three queues that describe how well you know it:
new never practised.
learning seen at least once, not yet stable.
learned committed to memory, intervals stretching into weeks.
The flashcard's coloured left bar always matches the phrase's queue, and the counters at the bottom of the screen show how many of each are left in the session.

R

Refine
Tiwtor
The follow-up prompt action on a draft phrase list. After Tiwtor generates a list, you can say “more colloquial”, “shorter”, “northern dialect”, or anything else — and the list reshapes in place. Refining doesn't lose the phrases you've already accepted; only the unaccepted ones get rewritten.
Retrievability
Method
The scheduler's estimate of how likely you are to recall a phrase right now — a value between 0 and 100%. Tiwtor surfaces it as the two-tone progress bar on every phrase list: the light bar is everything you've seen, the vivid bar is what the model thinks you'd actually remember today.
See also FSRS.

S

Southern Welsh
Welsh
The dialect spoken across Glamorgan, Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and the south. Tends to use fi or wi for “I”, moyn for “want”, and characteristic vowel shifts (heddiw → heddi). Generally a little slower and more sing-song than northern.
See also Dialect.
Spaced repetition
Method
The technique of reviewing a fact at gradually increasing intervals — minutes, then hours, then days, then weeks — based on how well you remember it each time. It exploits the spacing effect: things you review at lengthening intervals stick much longer than things you cram. Tiwtor's flashcard practice is built on it, scheduled by FSRS.
See also Interval, FSRS.
Speaking lesson
Tiwtor
A hands-free practice mode: Tiwtor gives you a prompt, you say the Welsh out loud, then it reveals the answer and you rate how you did. Built for the car, a walk, or anywhere you can't tap a screen. It shares the same memory schedule as flashcards, so progress carries across both.
Speech recognition
Method
Technology that turns spoken audio into text. Tiwtor's speaking lessons don't yet score your pronunciation automatically — you rate yourself — but automatic speech scoring is a feature we want to add. We'd rather ship it well than ship it poorly.

T

Tiwtor Plus
Tiwtor
Tiwtor's paid plan. The flagship Cymraeg Byw collection is free forever; Plus adds every other collection, unlimited AI-generated phrase lists, and a handful of quality-of-life extras. The AI side has a free tier too, so you can try generating your own lists before you subscribe.

W

Wenglish
Welsh
The English-with-Welsh-flavouring spoken across Wales — Welsh syntax and idioms surfacing in English speech, plus a generous sprinkle of Welsh loanwords. It's a continuum, not a separate language. Worth knowing about because plenty of bilingual speakers code-switch mid-sentence, and Tiwtor leans into the loanwords Welsh speakers genuinely use.