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Where to buy things

If you live outside Wales, perhaps the other side of the world, it may seem difficult to get hold of the language materials you need to help you learn Welsh. But it’s not really a big problem these days: a good bookshop should be able to order anything if you have the ISBN (which is always given in Gwybodiadur), and in this era of e-commerce it makes no great difference whether you’re in Bethesda Gwynedd or Bethesda Maryland, Caernarfon North Wales or even Carnarvon Western Australia.

Everyone knows about the big online bookshops like Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Perhaps you’ll have your own favourite supplier, but if you have no love for big multinationals, you might want to support your local bookshop by asking them to order it for you. You can find a long list of Welsh-interest bookshops in Wales at http://ylolfa.com/cyfeiriadur/llyfr.html, most of which should also be able to send you goods by post. Not all are specialist booksellers however, and may or may not stock a large number of titles.

If you’d rather shop online, you might still prefer to back an independent supplier against the giants. Here in the UK, I recommend the Glasgow booksellers John Smith, who have a good, well-designed website at http://www.johnsmith.co.uk. They also offer an out-of-print books service: for a small fee they will do their best to get hold of a copy for you. Meanwhile the UK’s largest foreign language bookseller, Grant and Cutler, have a website at http://www.grant-c.demon.co.uk. In the US, Books for Scholars may be a good source of obscure or academic titles: http://www.booksforscholars.com.

There are several “e-tailers” specialising in Welsh goods, without being specialist booksellers. Cadi Llwyd claims to be the first independent Welsh-language e-commerce site: http://www.cadi-llwyd.com/. The site is fully bilingual and stocks CDs and videos as well as books.

In a few cases you may have to contact the publisher directly, rather than ordering through a retailer. You can find details of all publishers whose products are mentioned on Gwybodiadur on the LINKS page.

If you want to work out what things priced in pounds sterling (UK£, GBP) cost in your money, you can find a currency converter at http://www.xe.net/ucc.

For a comprehensive directory of Welsh books, take a look at the Welsh Books Council’s handy new online books service, Gwales.com: http://www.gwales.com. You can see what’s new every month, check whether what you want is in print and available, and even place orders.

NOTE: Gwybodiadur is a completely ‘pro bono’ non-commercial site and has no vested interests. These are just suggestions of possible sources of learning materials.