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 @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
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:
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the word is very distinctive at the start of a sentence
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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
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.
Thank you for the explanation of its derivation. That will help fix the structure in my mind.
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!!!