Thanks to all above, these sort of disscusions help me no end to continue improving (i hope).
Of course it made me remember (cambig) the avocet and hopefully now i will not forget again.
Now i wonder how often “cam” will be used this Saturday 
Cheers J.P.
We’ll take Saturday cam wrth gam!
Good point, there is a road in Machynlleth called Y Garth, near the rocky outcrop where they put the Hollywood-style Machynlleth sign during the comedy festival.
However, the Ordnance Survey seem to agree with me. 
In the Glossary of Welsh Origins of Place Names in Britain (where they acknowledge Bangor University), under Garth (promontory, hill, enclosure) they list Llanfihangel-ar-arth SN4539 and Penarth ST1871 - I don’t know if that’s the one that can be viewed while eating ice cream?
In the introduction, they also say:
“There are many pitfalls for the unwary, attempting to understand place names and indulging in the indiscriminate, uninformed and naïve interpretation of elements on the basis of the place names as they appear today.” Now where’s the fun in that? 
So, some Penarths are bears and that some are just boring headlands, but which are which?
My hen nhadcu walked from his home in GlynARTHen in 188something to find work in Ebbw Vale. Since then we’ve kept Arthen in the family names. Their first house in GlynEbwy was called Glynarthen (still there!), my dad, brother and son all have/had Arthen as their middle name and I’ve named our home Maesarthen. I’ve had lots of plausible explanations of the meaning of Arthen from native speakers but am always open to new suggestions.
I think I have found one example. In this Radio Cymru link, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y42xq
The text description begins: “Aled Hall yn ceisio cadw trefn ar ddau dîm mewn brwydr eiriol.”
->“Aled Hall tries to keep order (among) two teams in a battle …?”.
“eiriol”? I fed this into Geriadur Bangor (which can usually demutate words), but only got “eiriol - to plead, to intercede”, which didn’t make much sense.
So, swallowing my pride, I google-translated the page, and we get the (now obvious…):
“Aled Hall tries to keep the two teams [in order] in a battle verbal”.
Of course! - “eiriol” is mutated “geiriol” - verbal. (an adjective).
But it’s also a verb, meaning to plead, to intercede, to pray, to advocate, apparently.
BTW, in the rest of that text is the interesting: “Gem banel i godi gwên”.
Useful phrase: “codi gwên” - “to raise a smile”.
I’ve always found, Aled Hall easy to understand and my ears always pick-up when he speaks.
In an only loosely related point… Have just compounded my arth garth / general word confusion by sending someone an email in which I used “hil rwystr” for hurdles race. Isn’t it awful when you hit send on something you almost immediately know to be wrong.
There we are, it wasn’t a very intelligent contribution to the debate, but I had to get it off my chest.
Both new words to me, but with the aid of online dictionaries, I see one meaning for “rhwystr” is “obstacle”, so it doesn’t sound too far out (although I see “clwyd” seems to be “hurdle”).
Isn’t the problem with the ‘Hil’ being usually used for race as in ethnicity? I think I saw that reported as being used on a notice about registration for the Velothon, but I can’t find it at the moment. Well, it’s a word you will remember now!
Yup. That one. I knew the word I was looking for was ras but I had the spelling wrong in my head, couldn’t find it in the dictionary, went for the only word I could find for race in the dictionary, and then hit send while simultaneously thinking “funny, how come I’ve never heard that word for race before…”
oops, yes, now I see (after a more careful look at a dictionary).
This is one of the potential pitfalls with dictionaries.
Agreed. I normally use http://mymemory.translated.net/en/Welsh_English_translations because it gives lots of sentences using the word in context, but I still slipped up yesterday.
In the words of the person who tried to make me feel better about my hil / ras error… it was a very “cute” mistake to make.
These kinds of innovations are what learning a language is all about. A touch of embarrasment, a small bruise on the forehead, possibly (doh!), and a pretty well never-to-be-forgotten addition to your vocabulary.
A bit like going to a French bakery every morning for a week asking for “Paid de raison”, only to find out at the end of the week that it’s pain aux raisins (bread with raisins), not something like “the Bread of Reason”. I brightened up their lives considerably that week…
Bargain!
J’aime ça beaucoup, Iestyn. You may have inspired them to create a “Bread of Reason” for their existentialist * customers:smile: Perhaps a Cwm Rhondda inspired Pain du Ciel should be developed too - Recipe suggestions here, please
A Cwm Rhondda “Pain du ciel” - would that be a very narrow loaf, then?
Maybe split into a small bit and a bigger bit
No need for fruit, but there may be a few pits… (where’s that “rolling round laughing” head that used to be on the old forum then)
As knitting was a theme of the April bootcamp, it’s possible that some of those bootcampers might particularly like this phrase from GK’s “Welsh Reader” (which I finally got around to buying), Page 62 (and used in an article about Meinir Gwilym, interestingly enough):
“ar y gweill” - “In the pipeline”, “planned”.
GK comments:
“this common idiom should be learnt; it literally means ‘on the knitting needles’, and I like using it in English as well. I’m hoping it may catch on.”
It’s things like this that make my day! (And incidentally, the bootcamp jumper is still ar y gweill…)
We’re just back from a weekend in St Dogmael’s (at a gorgeous dog-friendly B&B: www.orielmilgi.com), and we walked into Cardigan for a mooch-about. I was able to give Angharad a little tour of the town and tell her a bit about the history, thanks to Rowan’s wonderful guided tour. There’s now a great pizza place in a tipi just down by the poem-on-the-harbour. Happy memories!