I feel sure I have heard Welsh people say ‘Braf eich cyfarfod chi’ to me at the end of a telephone call so I was a bit puzzled when I used the word ‘cyfarfod’ in Wales and got the reply ‘Oh, is ‘cyfarfod’ a verb, now?’
Is it OK on the 'phone but not to a person, or is it acceptable in some areas and not others?
And if ‘cyfarfod’ is only a noun, is ‘cwrdd’ the verb I should have used?
I know I’ve a number of questions here, but I am confident that you will come up with a simple answer! It’s probably just me fussing over details.
My dictionary says its a verb noun - whatever that is…Cyfarfod is what I always use as a verb…I’m always saying: "Neis i (eich) gyfarfod chi…
Cyfarfod is also - meeting
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What Kim says. The ‘fod’ in cyfarfod is related to ‘bod’, a verb if there ever was one. For instance, you’ll find ‘cyfarfu’ for he/she met, similar to ‘bu’ for he/she was.
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Thank you. I can feel justified to use cyfarfod as both a verb and a noun from now on!
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I think “cwrdd” is the correct verb, meaning “to meet”, as “cyfarfod” generally means “meeting”.
I’ve heard cwrdd â but cyfarfod â is also in my learners dictionary for ‘to meet’. By the way when I was at school in the middle of the last century we called a verb-noun an infinitive, which we were forbidden to ‘split’ as in Star Trek’s expression ‘to boldly go’. Things change - I hear ‘I arranged a meet today’ and ‘let’s have a meet’ in English now, makes me wince a bit, I’m afraid.
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Do you mean in Welsh or in English?
I think the point is - as I understand it, based on my reading (which may be incorrect of course) of Gareth King, that Welsh doesn’t have an infinitive, and that’s why it is described in current dictionaries as a verb-noun and not as an infinitive. Which to me means that it can either be used as a verb or as a noun … it has the characteristics of both. In English, we have to convert verbs into a slightly different form, by adding “-ing” to them, which is technically a gerund (and it can often be used as an adjective as well). This is why “let’s have a meet” sounds so wrong to you (and me) because we want to hear that “-ing” in order to make it into a tidy, well-behaved noun.
However, it seems that Welsh doesn’t need to do that.
(Why am I not surprised…? 
)
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I mean in English, and, incidentally, in other languages I learned at school too. I have wondered about the term ‘verb noun’, and your post has cleared that up for me - thank you! Just recently I bought two grammar books (Heini Gruffudd and Christine Jones) and am looking forward to a good browse. I like tidy, well behaved grammar, but am totally sold on the SSiW way of learning languages. I love the way that we learn a real, living, spoken language with SSiW, even if I will enjoy a peep into the grammar books from time to time. And I still go to evening classes, but that’s a long story, in every sense.
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Dw i wedi dysgu - I have learn’t
Cwrdd â = to meet with someone
Cyfarfod (ydd) noun = a meeting (s), assembly (ies)
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Useful little disussion on ForumWales on the matter here-
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In level 2 (northern), there is frequent use of cyfarfod as a verb, e.g. Treulio llai o amser yn cyfarfod fel grwp
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To be honest, that sounds like someone being a bit sniffy with you - was it a first language speaker? I’d expect every first language speaker to know perfectly well that ‘cyfarfod’ is a verb as well as a noun, even though ‘cwrdd â’ is used in the south.
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Yes mikeellwood, you are right - the verb-noun is a specifically Celtic thing, and it is not an infinitive. It is grammatically a noun, and it is the ‘default’ form of the verb…that’s why it is sometimes (but misleadingly) equated with the infinitive in other languages. There are no infinitives in Welsh, any more than there are in English, for that matter.
You can tell the verb-noun is a noun, because you can use adjectives with it: canu da ‘good singing’, ysgrifennu gwael ‘bad writing’.
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Yes, it was a first-language speaker in North Wales. Presumably, he just uses cyfarfod as ‘meeting’ and cwrdd as ‘meet’. I’ll just disregard his fussiness, then.
That’s really quite baffling. But yes, absolutely, disregard the fussiness (which may well have been a misguided attempt at humour!)… 
I think he was genuinely trying to improve my grammar; evidently he got it quite wrong, though.
But out of such a simple matter came a useful and interesting discussion. Thanks, everyone.
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Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi Mr King for your kind and helpful clarification.
Aha, interesting. Whereas “…canu yn dda” is “singing well” where it is a verb followed by an adverb (I think).
May I prevail further on your kindness: I noticed that there was a 2014 update to your “Basic Grammar and workbook”, although the Intermediate Grammar and Workbook remains at a significantly older level, as far as I can see. Are there any plans to update the Intermediate one? (Apologies if this is commercially confidential, in which case I would not of course expect you to be able to answer).
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Yes - ‘…canu’n dda’ is going to have an auxiliary in front of it, because the 'adverb ‘yn dda’ means it’s a verb. So for example: Maen nhw’n canu’n dda ‘They sing well’ or ‘They are singing well’. But of course you can also have: Mae’r canu’n dda ‘The singing is good’ - where canu is the (verb-)noun, and the yn is there not to make an adverb but to link noun to adjective. It’s too late in the night for this, isn’t it? It’s in the grammar somewhere. 
There are no plans to update the Intermediate Grammar and Workbook - it sells far fewer than the Basic, and therefore the publishers won’t do it.
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Have you thought about self-publishing? If there are any updates you’d like to make, that is… I suspect there would be quite a bit of interest here if you did
No aran…it’s not really a question of updates with the Intermediate (not like the Grammar), and anyway the publishers have the rights to the book of course.
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