Everybody, there’s a secret password and everthing!
Yes it’s passwor… Di***l, I nearly gave it away. 
But I don’t mind being argued with, @hewrop ! 
And thank you for your other kind remarks.
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OK, admit it. It was me -
Half way through answering “Dwi’n moyn…” when I realised that I was on Northern and changed the moyn to an isio mid flight.
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I get really fed up with the modern habit in English of using ‘arguably’ instead of ‘probably’ or ‘possibly’, usually the former! But languages change and old biddies like me have to grin and bear it! I learned Cymraeg before some of you were born and lost it again through lack of use. Coming back now, I was for ever finding that words I knew were now so obscure that only someone’s elderly uncle remembered them! Add to that de/gogledd confusion and life was not made easier! I find the apparent appearance of dwi’n isio or isia or eisiau fascinating and have been following the thread with interest! I thought I remembered ‘mae eisau imi’ and ‘mae angen imi’ being used yn yr gogledd, but have not asked before. @garethrking, sorry to bother you again, but is that a phantom of my imagination? When I first heard ‘dwi isia…’ on S4C, I was surprised!
It’s no bother, @henddraig - and it’s not a phantom. But I would say that when I heard the gog girls in the kitchen saying mae isio i mi…, that meant I need to… rather than I want to…. For the latter they always used dw i isio…
The wonderful Fynes-Clinton over 100 years ago in his study of Bangor-area Welsh noted eisiau as isio (in his own phonetic script), correctly identifying it as a noun, and later in the entry says:
…instances like the following are frequent: dw i ddim isio fo ‘I don’t want it’; oeddach chi isio fo? ‘did you want it’. The original form, however, [he means as a true noun] always occurs in answers to questions, eg. : dach chi isio hwn? ‘do you want this?’. Ans. Oes ‘yes’.
Am sbort!
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Diolch yn fawr! When they use mae isio imi for. need, does that mean they don’t use angen? Because that rings a bell with me!
I think there’s considerable overlap between isio and angen - and angen of course is used as a pseudoverb as well: you can say mae angen geiriadur arna i, but tons of people I am sure would just as likely say dw i angen geiriadur, both meaning of course I need a dictionary. But the difference between isio and angen here is that (these days, and in my experience certainly), with isio it DOES make a difference in meaning: mae isio i mi fynd really means I need to go, while of course dw i isio mynd means I want to go.’
I’m basing this mostly on Môn and Meirionnydd gog, remember.
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For me dwi’n isio sounds like the equivalent of saying ‘Me wants’! That’s how wrong it sounds like to my ears anyway, and I’m still young! Could be a regional thing but I’ve never heard it myself.
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@garethrking Or, super colloquially ‘Ma’ ‘sio fi’. Literally all you will hear generally is ‘Masho fi’! Bit difficult to translate for @henddraig. If I were to really analyse it, it feels like talking about myself in the 3rd person. In usage, it kind of suggests that you should do something as well, rather than just needing to. For example 'Ma’sio fi dalu’r bil ‘na fory’.
Personally, I tend to use 'Dwi angen ‘insert verb’, for straightfoward ‘I need’.
I was typing this when I asked myself, why ‘fi’ instead of ‘mi’. ‘Fi’ sounds more natural, even if it might be less grammatically correct. ‘i mi’ sounds a bit textbook to my ears, a bit like ‘Lle ma’ bag chdi?’ compared to '‘Ym mhle mae dy fag’?, but it might not for other areas, who knows. I’m from Llyn so that colours my thoughts. However, the example I gave is a subject for a WHOLE different thread ( regarding usage of possesives)! Ha!
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I always use ‘dw i angen’ which is just ‘I need’.
‘mae angen geiriadur arna i’ sort of translates as ‘I’m in need of’
Folks, I’m sure I should know this, but my poor old brain has gone blank. A white dog is ci gwyn, yes? A white cat? Cath wen or cath gwen? I think ‘wen’, but If so, is it ever right to use ‘gwen’ except in names?
Me too - and I’m not even a native speaker. But it definitely grates something dreadful!
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The way I have seen it –
It’s gwen when used as an adjective:
Dw i’n gweld cath gwen (I see a white cat)
As an adverb it gets mutated:
Mae’r gath yn wen (The cat is white)
I hope that’s correct.
No, it’ll be cath wen because feminine singular nouns mutate a following adjective.
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So can you think of a context where you’d get gwen, i.e. unmutated feminine? All I can come up with are fragments of mediaeval poetry, where you get “nominal sentences” with no verb ‘to be’ – something like hen y dyn meaning “the man is old” (or maybe “old is the man”), as opposed to hen ddyn (I guess?) for just “an old man”.
In which case, maybe, “Gwen y gath” would be “White is the cat.” I think literary Welsh still does nominal sentences, but it’s probably a bit mediaeval-style for everyday chit-chat…
Diolch yn fawr, @garethrking. Do you agree with Richard Buck that gwen is only used in names and archaic or poetic contexts? I should explain that i was asked a simple question about Welsh and then realised it didn’t seem so simple after all! i.e gwyn - male, gwen - female…oh dear, all the examples seem to give me ‘wen’!
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I think: Cathod gwen - white cats. The plural doesn’t have the same mutation.
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Brilliant!
i do hope that is right! It feels right! I was sure I’d used gwen in the past, but couldn’t be sure it wasn’t one of my ancient usages!
Well, that does sound much more sensible, but I’m sorry to have to give up on Gwen y gath - I was getting quite attached to it, what with the alliteration ‘n’ all 
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Another problem! Gwên = smile. Probably, need to show that the accents are in use to differentiate!
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