Dwedest ti vs wnest ti ddweud

Yes, prob go with Sam and Gareth’s findings and isten out for a member of public being interviewed rather than the presenter. Also pester somone from Penllyn :grinning: @CatrinLliarJones? Also I’ll ask a couple of youngsters from pwllheli but might need to pick a an appropriate moment so as not to seem too weird :sunglasses:

Oh, diolch am y wers (gwers?)! But I have never met ddaru. Is it specific to an area?
edit:- From other answers, it seems fairly spread, but???

I think there are two factors at work here with ddaru:

  1. the word is very distinctive at the start of a sentence

  2. the dd sound is weak and prone to loss anyway

Therefore simplification is not surprising in rapid speech. Aru at the start of a sentence is as distinctive as ddaru. And indeed ddaru is itself a simplification - it used to be ddarfu, from the old compound of bod: darfod happen.

Ddaru (i) mi weld
(lit.) It happened (to) me to see

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It is totally Gog, @henddraig - predominantly northwest, I would say.

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There is a difference between these two, of course - meddai (+ variants) is a quotative verb, i.e. needs to (usually) follow direct speech in quotation marks. It’s the exact equivalent of archaic English quoth in this way. Compare:

Dwedodd Kat bod hi’n rhy hwyr.
Kat said it was too late

"Mae’n rhy hwyr,’ meddai Kat.
“It’s too late,” said Kat.

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Thank you for the explanation of its derivation. That will help fix the structure in my mind. :+1:

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Spent a lot of time near Bangor but no further west than Caernarfon and there rarely. Mind, I was with monoglot English-speaking ‘auntie’ from Abertawe!!!

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