Hi, my first post:
Is what sounds like “Mae isiau fi” for I need (S Wales), the same word as 'dwi’n eisiau for I want (N Wales). Is “rhiad I fi” stll ok for I must?
Thanks, John.
[edit]:
Sorry, that should have been: Mae’n rhaid i mi.
Rhaid = necessary, so e.g. (mae´n) rhaid i fi fynd = I must go, have to go.
Eisiau is pronounced isio (or isia, weird I know) and means ´want´ so I want to go´ would be Dwi isio mynd ( there is no (y)n before isio, and I always put it in without thinking when I try to speak Welsh!)
Moyn is the spoken form of ymofyn ´to ask for´. It´s used instead of isio in some parts of S. Wales, so dwi´n moyn coffi ´I need some coffee´.
Please confirm the above, someone 
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I use moyn for want.
And angen for need.
Rhaid for must.
Although I’ve been taught eisiau I don’t use it.
I’m in the south. I may well be incorrect.
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And there is chwant, for want, also.
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Marg. I always understood moyn and isio to be equivalent and which you use just depends on where you´re from.
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Moyn is used alongside eisiau. It is localised, but like most dialect words it is not a “use one or the other” things.
How “eisiau”, “rhaid” and “moyn” are used, crossing over each other, replacing each other and blurring the meaning between “want” and “need” change from person to person as well as place to place.
This actually makes it easier- use any one confidently enough where the context makes it clear what you mean, and you will sound natural! 
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Actually, the spelling and pronunciation there is pretty regular for spoken Welsh. “ei” to"i", “si” spelling “sh” and “au” going to “eh” are pretty common sounds. It’s just that they all happen in “eisiau”, in such a short time, as it were!
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Round here at any rate, (and also according to everyone I’ve talked to who knows and cares about such things, for what little that counts!) there is no “yn” before “moyn” either, but it’s not something to worry about!
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Welcome!
My answers to your questions would be “yes” and “yes”, whilst I might comment unasked on your last sentence to say in my opinion “rhaid i fi” is also fine.
As always, just in my experience and opinion. 
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Ah, thanks for all of these replies. Very helpful.
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Interesting about no yn before moyn - This is one of the few things that I would have said as a kid, even though I never grew up speaking Welsh as such. I’ve always done it and never thought about it - not the yn as such (can’t think when there would be a full blown yn) but an almost inaudible 'n anyway I’ve just been speaking to myself outloud and sometimes I think I’m saying it, but maybe I’m not if that makes any sense at all.
You learn something new every day.
Well “moyn”, (a word which developed from “ymofyn” into its own word, meaning and usage as it were!), is such a dialect word that there is even less “right” and "wrong " way to use it than with most words!
Just by common usage. Most native (from birth) speakers round here that I know and talk to in Welsh don’t use an “yn”/“n”, and the native speakers I know who ever think about such things (a much smaller number!) definitely know they aren’t using one, as it were.
It’s just an arbitrary common usage, probably carried over from eisiau, if you see what I mean. If you use an “yn” that’s great!
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I have been saying it wrong over the years or I think I have, but I guess also, that it’s used so frequently and said so quickly, that you would have to have pretty acute hearing to detect it, I can’t ctually hear myself saying the “n”, but my brain is saying it is there, so maybe I learned some incorrect grammar later in life and some tricks of the brain gtoing on here.
Definitely not a case of “wrong” or “right”, (as I say, “moyn” is so “dialect” and “non-literary”, that it doesn’t really enter into many discussions or ideas about “proper grammar!” If you were to be prescriptive, you could say that “moyn” is from a “normal” verb (ymofyn), and thus needs an “yn”. Fine by me. But even people I know who “care” about grammar don’t generally that far. I’m just going by by common usage- common usage of people I know, including those who “care” about grammar.
Just common usage! (And how people speaking the language think of it, as it were. Whether you hear the presence of absence of an “yn”/“n” depends on the other words in the sentence, the pronunciation of the speaker and how much you are listening, but it generally isn’t there round here either “physically” or in the minds of the people. No one is in two minds about whether “yn” goes before “mynd”, for example.) No right and wrong, nothing to worry about, and don’t think of yourself as “wrong”.
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There’s a lot of us about, aren’t there! The number of people who grew up familiar with and using bits of the language but never counted ourselves as speakers. Sometimes it feels like the vast majority of Welsh people. Even those who claim not to know a word of Welsh often show far more knowledge than perhaps they even realise themselves. Sometimes I think it is pretty much every Welsh person. Learning Welsh often feels like re meeting an old friend. I found (and still find) it difficult to understand which bits of Welsh I was learning often from scratch and which bits I was uncovering from the back of my mind somewhere!
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Just to add to the discussion…In the Southern course, we use yn before moyn - sa i’n moyn mynd or do’n i ddim yn moyn mynd. So, many differences in dialect and region, it seems - so definitely paid becso amdani
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I’m in the South
I think I remember Iestyn saying said he had to think before deciding to use “yn” before “moyn”.
(Apologies if I am incorrect.)
IMHO, no “yn” would have been the (very very very very very very…[deep breath] very very very very very) slightly better way of doing it for the course.
Iestyn obviously disagrees, and that is great! It may well be more natural to his dialect, individual way of speaking, or he thinks it should be used in the course for some other reason.
Certainly nothing to worry about.
But then, who is going to agree with every single thing any course does?
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Well I was certainly not given enough to speak Welsh, but a teasing amount to make things a bit frustrating. I got early years immersion in hearing Welsh in the background or between relatives, but only occasionally directly to me. Where I live now it is so common for people of my age to have at least one parent who is a first language Welsh speaker and Grandparents who only spoke Welsh.
I think that means there are a lot of people who have pretty good hearing when it comes to Welsh being spoken and many words are very familiar friends even if the meanings of some of the words or phrases can sometimes be a bit elusive.
It could just be a case of ¨phonetic assimilation¨ whereby -n + m- comes out in normal speech as -mm-. Then whether you ´think´ you´re saying the ´n´ or not depends upon how you subconsciously ´analyse´ what you´re saying. If you think of ´moyn´ as still being a verb (verbal noun/present participle to get technical) then you probably ´hear´ the ´n´.
A useful mental trick perhaps, when learning a language, at least to give yourself confidence, is to tell yourself, ¨I know this, It´s just slipped my mind for a moment¨. So if you get stuck in conversation, instead of saying, ¨I´m a beginner, I don´t think we´ve covered that yet¨, you say (to yourself or even out loud), ¨Sorry, my Welsh is a bit rusty …¨
Now from what you say, for many of you that would actually be very close to the truth more often than not.
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