Quick question: good/well what am I hearing?

So, yn dda can sound like /un da/ for ‘well’ or /un va/ for ‘good’, but it’s spelled ‘dda’ regardless?

Nope, good question, because I think you’ve got a little hearing hiccup happening here :sunny:

‘yn dda’ should always sound like ‘un’+‘thar’ (with a ‘th’ sound as in ‘the’, and without actually saying the ‘r’!).

It’s very common for people to hear ‘dd’ as an English ‘v’ - there are some good YouTube clips on how easy this sort of shift in hearing is - if you could see them being said, you’d be much more likely to hear them correctly :sunny:

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This is right on. It’s easy for me to confuse the ‘th’ in ‘then’ and the sound ‘v’ makes because both are unaspirated, and in English you use the sound but don’t ever think about it, and I’m hearing that for sure. But I think I’m also hearing a sound shift after the yn?

As in, when he said “good is /da/, but you’ll also come across /da/ to mean ‘well’ as in /un va/”. I listened to that section (C1:G4:20min mark) about 3 times but I keep hearing it.

I guess my question is, does ‘yn’ cause a sound change?

edit: the more of the lesson I listen to, the more yn dda definitely sounds like /un tha/, so thank you:) So, is ‘good’ still /tha/ as well (or I guess /thar/ for non-rhotic accents :sunny: )?

2nd edit: ‘dd’ doesn’t have a soft mutation so I’m guessing I’m just hearing weird stuff, and that’s on me lol

In this case I tend to take a look how word is written to determine is it really “v” or “th” but - well, hehe - saying that “th” in the middle of some words (like byddi di’n, cerdded and similar thingys), can be quite tongue twister. I admit I unconsciously “cheat” sometimes saying “V” instead of “th” in such words. I know it’s not right but anyway … it happens. :slight_smile:

Yes, you have correctly identified this. i.e. it does in this situation, i.e. “da” will soften to “dda” after “yn”.

This is trickier, as we could get into grammar, and when starting out the SSiW way, it’s best to ignore grammar until later (much later…some might say never :slight_smile: (but I wouldn’t go quite that far myself :slight_smile: ).

Best I can tell you is that after some nouns, “da” will soften, and after others, it won’t.
Listen as carefully as you can to the lessons, and hopefully these will come naturally, i.e. with SSiW, we don’t learn them by learning a rule, but by hearing them in context a sufficient number of times.

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Perfect answer to my question! Thanks to everyone that contributed! :sunny: So good is ‘da’ and it sometimes softens to ‘dda’ (and I’ll go with the flow as far as when and where). woot!

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