I have one. A new one. I was mulling over whether I could justify mentioning it on the Forum when I realised that I do not know whether the saying translates. In fact, a load of proverbs and sayings are the most difficult things to get right. I can say gwenynen yn fy het or even gwenynen yn fy bonet, but would a Cymro Cymraeg recognise the saying or have to translate it and only know it because he speaks English as well? @aran, when the move is over, can you help? Is there a handy guide to sayings in both languages?
oh, my bee? Well it isnāt really Forum material. It is the number of inshore lifeboats which RNLI do not run and are now dependent on local funding. Given the increase in drownings lately, I feel the badau-achub are needed. I have a theory that folk have holidays on the Med with no tides and then visit our beaches without realising how far and fast tides can move. There was a Cei Bach episode on this theme, so maybe itās relevant to the Forum after all?
Also, I remember showing one little girl from an estate in Abertawe that sand could suck at your feet, so you should never swim out to sea, always walk out and swim back!
We have the āGeiriadur idiomauā compiled by Alus Rhys Cownie, which gives for āa bee in her bonnetā āchwilen yn ei whenā, with the fuller example:
She has a bee in her bonnet about men with red hair / mae ganddi chwilen yn ei phen ynglÅ·n Ć¢ dynion Ć¢ gwallt coch.
Thereās also asgwrn iāw grafu which is more or less equivalent to having āa bone to pickā with someone (literally āa bone to scratchā) - I think thatās more or less in the same general area of meaning? Iām now questioning whether having a bee in your bonnet is equivalent to having a bone to pick, or notā¦ hmm. Feedback on English idiom equivalence, anyone?
Diolch yn fawr iawn am dy helpu! Although I must say, Iād rather have gwenynen yn fy het than a beetle in my head!! And as soon as I said it, I remembered being very small and frightened that a nasty thing was going to run into my ear while I was asleep and get into my head! I think my Mamās Dad, raised by his Welsh mam, must have said it, in English! I had heard mention of an earwig and jumped to conclusions!!
Iām not sure when someone explained or even whether! As my vision was not of an earwig, which I donāt think Iād seen, but of woodlice, probably I just learned not to take things literally! In fact, that Grandad said all sorts which I knew werenāt true, so it was easy to discount him!! (He was an absolute sweetie, but he would say, āWhen I was a liittle girl!ā and I knew heād been a boy!)
Maeān ddrwg gen i, but I do not think that is the same saying, but if we are building up a dictionary of them, it is very useful to have!!
I would say picking or scratching a bone is what you want to do when you have a cause for disagreement, a feeling of injustice. I was trying to think of an example and I thought:-
If the Independent Lifeboat (bad-achub) at St. Abbs or, say, at Loughor, saved a lad from drowning and his dad wrote to the Secretary to say, āI canāt tell you how grateful I am, and my wife too. Of course I sent a donation to RNLI at once and told them what you did for us!ā
Well, the folk trying to raise money to maintain, supply, house and eventually replace the Independent boat would feel they had a bone to pick neu asgwrn iāw grafu gyda RNLI for pocketing the donation without explaining to that dad that none would go to the boat which saved his son! (That is based on something which happens a lot!)
No a typo for phen : pen = head; ei ben = his head; ei phen = her head.
Also note that ei is one of the few words deliberately mis-spelt even in literary Welsh, possibly to make the sense clear when reading. It sounds just like i.
IĀ“ve an old(ish) book here called Cymraeg Idiomatig by one C.P. Cule (a spaniard I think!) D. Brown aĀ“i Feibion, cyf. 1971/72. Probably out of print but you might find it in a library. You would need basic Welsh as the explanations are in Welsh. It gives a series of made-up, but credible passages full of idioms, and then explains them all.
And it does indeed give mae ganddo chwilen yn ei ben as equivalent to ĀØhe has a bee in his bonnetĀØ, although I admit itĀ“s not a pleasant thought
Yes, some good ones here, how about : Mynd Ć¢Ā“r maen iĀ“r wal Heb flewyn ar ei dafod Diwedd y gĆ¢n ywĀ“r geiniog Pob copa walltog RhoiĀ“r ffidil yn y to
Would you believe it, Huw, well of course you wouldā¦that this unobservant old dragon didnāt notice that there was a typo when I read it, it was spelled correctly later! And I still didnāt notice when I copied it!! Much giggling of a girlish nature when I read your comment!!
I started to say that my fire is not nearly as fierce as my words, and thought, āAnother saying!ā So @sarapeacock, can your helpful book tell us the Cymraeg equivalent to āHer bark is worse than her bite!ā? I do hope it isnāt a boring straight translation! (Oh and canāt type Ć¢, (I copied that one)ā¦
Oh! So I can type, āmae fy nhĆ¢nā after all!!
Iām very sorry, my dear henddraig, I will have to let you down - the idiom dictionary doesnāt have that one (under either ābarkā or ābiteā). Perhaps there isnāt an equivalentā¦
There is a sizeable cottage industry on books being turned out on Welsh idioms ( recently published, in Welsh and English) but after a quick look through three of them I canāt find one either.
Probably something similar if you continue searching (arranging idioms in some sort of easily searched order is very difficult!), but, of course, whether people actually use these things is something I have found to be another matter entirely!
Now I use them to look up something I come across in Welsh elsewhere, rather than the other way round.
Oh, by the way, Geiriadur yr Academi has āmae ei gyfarth yn waeth naāi frathiadā under ābarkā, which is the literal translation you were fearing
Just to make it clear after that - interesting - little interlude, as above stated, the Geiriadur yr Academi (a very good source) has a direct translation of ābark worse than biteā, rather than anything else.
Certainly you can make things up, itās part of using the language- to be honest, it is better simply to express yourself naturally in the language rather than finding out translations or equivalents of idioms which are often not as widely used as you might get the impression from courses etc.
Just to add to this - if I find an idiomatic phrase in a dictionary or similar I would always try it out on a couple of native speakers first, just to see if they had heard it used.
I remember when I was at school we had to learn various āidiomaticā French phrases such as āNom dāun chien!ā, only to find out (when we eventually got to meet real French people our age a few years later) that they were things their grandparents would say (sort of āOh, by Jove!ā) Which was more than a bit embarrassing to a 13-year-old.
So just because itās in the dictionary doesnāt mean itāll make sense to your friends in the pub (or library, or whateverā¦)
Absolutely! Thatās exactly what I meant when I said I only do it the other way round- look up from the Welsh I come across, as it were.
Good, good advice. Always good to try it out on Welsh speakers and see how it rolls, as it were. Otherwise, considering the personality of people who often write these books ( not to do them down, probably similar to mine in many ways!) you can end up just using words and phrasing which were odd and unusual when they were written, never mind about here and now!
Nothing wrong with having an odd or old fashioned manner of speaking of course- I am odd mannered old fashioned bloke myself! Certainly odd!
Feedback on English idiom equivalence, anyone? 
