Why is it cawsiog for cheesy and not cawslyd?
I’ve never heard anyone say cawsiog - cawslyd is what you hear all the time… 
Both are acceptable, but cawslyd is probably more common.
Cawslyd is also the one used more often when describing non food items such as elevator music and Mills & Boon novels
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Word(s) of the Day 02/10/2018
Paratoi = para-toy
Paratoadau = para-toe-add-aye
Paratoi means to prepare
Paratoadau means preparations
Sound file -
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This is the word I would use in my French lessons at school - going straight from Welsh to France lessons was OK normally, but for some reason my brain wanted Paratoi to be French.
I just looked up the latin and by coincidence its Praeparatio - almost a mixture of prepare and paratoi (spooky)
In North Wales I used Cawslyd for “cheesy” as in cringy…no one batted an eyelid.
I used Cawslyd in Dyfed and people said they never heard it … Cawsiog was what they would say for both food and abstract
In wrriten language on menus I see Cawsiog a lot now
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Interesting. Out of curiosity I looked in Y Geiriadur Mawr and found a third word - cawsaidd - meaning cheesy. Note that cawsaidd is the only word GM has for “cheesy”.
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I saw this & thought “I’m pretty sure it’s more than just a coincidence,” but I couldn’t put my finger on the details till I looked it up in the GPC.
Latin parare means ‘to get ready’ – past tense paratus ‘ready’, and you can also make praeparare (‘to get ready in advance’ i.e. prepare), from which praeparatio is ‘preparation’.
But from paratus comes Welsh parod (‘ready’, as in yn barod ‘already’), which is apparently the root of paratoi (although the GPC is a bit vague about exactly what the ending used to make it back into a verb is).
(Disclaimer: I have looked some of this up before, when I was trying to find words to compare between Welsh and Welsh Romani for the Eisteddfod last year, so you kind of triggered a memory. There’s a word you find in the Welsh bible paratoad meaning ‘preparation’, as in Friday being the day of preparation for the Sabbath – and the Welsh Romani word for Friday is, not coincidentally, parasko, from the Greek for ‘preparation’…)
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Oh I had totally missed the link between latin and parod - that I think I always heard in the “barod” version, and I’m still in a phase where I perceive mutated words as totally different!
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Cawslyd, cawsiog and cawsaidd are all perfectly acceptable. Use will differ from area to area, even from household to household sometimes as with many other different terms. But you should always be understood, especially in context. Choose the one you like best and go with it! 
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Its all good to me … Dwi ddim yn poeni am y peth … but its the way first language speakers can rubbish any claims I make from my experiences because I am not a natural speaker…can irk me somewhat as Ive lived across Cymru lol…
I remember telling someone that Bala was a word for the place at which a river outflows from a lake (makes perfect sense in context) … and yet they said I couldn;t possibly be right because I did not speak Welsh fluently… ah beth bynnag
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Oh how dare they!!!
Our language belongs to everyone. It’s multicoloured and multifaceted, it’s ever changing and evolving. Luckily the numbers of first language speakers who make it their business to criticise learners are in the minority. Hold your head high and own the language which you have worked so hard to learn.
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thankfully they were only 18 year olds…and I hope they mature and open their minds with age and profiad!
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Perhaps you can help with a few other coincidences that niggle with me a bit.
In chemistry the old greek “ortho” is used for adjacent, which is different to the definitions I’ve come across, such as “proper” in English. The chemistry usage seems to match with wrtho in Welsh, also tje greek “para” is used for opposite, but could easily be interpretad as “continuing from” or the Welsh para. “cis-” and “” cyd-" and “trans” and “traws” also seem to match up well?
Annoyingly, I can’t be that much help on these
-traws and trans are definitely related, from a root something like ter/tra which basically means ‘going through’ and is also the source of English ‘through’.
-ortho means proper, as you say, but also ‘correct’, ‘right angle’, and (basic meaning) ‘upright’. Apparently there is a rare and old Welsh word listed in the GPC as ardd, meaning ‘hill’, that corresponds to it, as does Irish ard as in Ard Righ Mór (‘Great High King’, if I’ve spelt it correctly). Wrth comes from an Indo-European root wert/wort/wrt that means ‘turn’, and which also gives us ‘vertex’ (turning a corner) and (I think) ‘vortex’. There’s also a development from the sense ‘turn’ to ‘exchange’ (turn goods over to somebody else?) which gives us English ‘worth’ (value) but also Welsh gwerth and gwerthu. The English word ‘worth’ is common to all the Germanic languages, so doesn’t come from Celtic, but the Welsh gwerth may or may not have been influenced by the Old English.
-I thought cis- and cyd looked pretty plausible, thinking of related Latin words like citer, but the dictionary says ‘no’. Apparently Latin cis is from a root meaning ‘here, this side’, which also gives us the English word ‘here’, but the Celtic is from a root meaning ‘to lie down’ – whence lying down together (as in sexual intercourse), whence all sorts of shades of ‘coupling’/'coupled/‘together’.
-I’m drawing a blank on ‘para’ – it just reminds me of too many school Greek lessons, getting completely confused about Ancient Greek prepositions…
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I think Para in English is usually Along Side. Para Church, Para legal, Para Medic, etc. I dont think that its the same para as in paratoi, Parade etc.
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Difyr yw Dyfed… 
I can guarantee you I’ve never heard Catrin ever say either cawsiog or cawsaidd.
[Yes, I know that’s all I’m going to hear for the next few days now… ]
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Just scrolling on by and I saw this…
I so remember from school using “Mae chwant o bwyd arnaf i”. I mentioned this to a friend (same sort of age) and she had no recollection of the phrase. I thought i had mis-remembered! Maybe I’m not going mad after all 
Some of the posts above (on wrth, para, etc) got me thinking about words beginning with ‘an’… e.g. anghofio (from cofio), anghywir (from cywir). This strikes me as being similar to medical/scientific terminology where ‘a’ ‘an’ etc denote absence of something. for example - asystole (absence of heart beat), apnoea (no breating), anaerobic. I guess all from the latin root?
Chwant can also be used to mean fetish/kink in some parts (Aran even heard that in Gwynedd?)
I think some more Welsh ways of speaking are being shed like this and replaced by a much more simplified…sometimes heavily English influenced phraseology…hearing kids saying “Dwi’n cael dau frawd” in Eastern Wales instead of Mae gen i … can take you back somewhat lol