A good rule of thumb from Gareth King is that the list of “stative” verbs that would usually sound odd/wrong with wnes i is very similar to the list of those that sound odd in English with “I’m x-ing” (“I am loving her” sounds wrong, unless she’s a Big Mac). Although the fit isn’t perfect, it makes it easy for an English speaker to develop a feel for when wnes i sounds right/wrong.
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I keep mixing up ma dal rhaid i fi and ma dal gyda fi and I can’t figure out why. Any tips to help me to get them right?
Mae dal rhaid i fi = I still have to, (with some sense of compulsion). It will be followed by a verb.
Mae dal gyda fi = I still have, (with a sense of possession). It will be followed by a noun.
Hope that helps.
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Thank you so much for answering that, much appreciated. Fingers crossed that will help me get them the right way around.
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Can someone tell me what the difference is between the words for “day” - dydd and diwrnod? Thanks! 
This is one of those things that crop up from time to time, so instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, here is an older post talking about this
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Is it possible to say „Mewn drama dw i“?
I know I can say „Dw i mewn drama“.
And the other way round:
Can I say „Dw i actor“ instead of „Actor dw i“
And then there is another question 
If I say „Dw i‘n gweld car glas“ how do you know which colour I mean, if „glas“ can be blue, azure, green, grey and silver according to the dictionary (gweiadur.com)?
Same with „llwyd“ (grey/brown)
Yes, if you’re drawing attention to being in a drama (as opposed to being in a comedy, for instance).
Yes, you can say “Dwi’n actor”, but again, if you want to focus the sentence and draw attention to being an actor rather than, say, a teacher, you’d need “actor dwi”
Most people will understand glas as blue and llwyd as grey - those are their most common meanings.
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Diolch Siaron!
So it‘s just as I thought
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Small update. I met a Welsh tutor from Pembroke last week, noticed him saying mee-oown and asked him if it was a Pembrokeshire/south-western thing. He said it was.
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In the Vocab List, it’s written as “sha lan” with “(tuag i lan)” given as an alternative
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In the Old Course L2 Vocabulary lesson 8 we get the expression ‘i fyny grisiau’ for ‘upstairs’. Dw i’n mynd i fyny grisia etc.
But in the examples, the ‘i’ is regularly missed out. Is there a pattern to this? e.g. it’s used when there’s an idea of motion (to go upstairs) and missed out when it’s place (he is upstairs)?
Or is it just sometimes left out in quick normal speech, particularly after a vowel?
Secondly, Aran drops in the phrase “Who’d bring up kids?”, with an answer which sounds like Pwy faga’r plant. Is that the conditional magu → magai fo/hi?
And if it is, is it common to use the ‘short’ conditional (e.g. without byddai) like this in speech?
Thanks!
Yes, because the i here is attached to the mynd, not to the fyny, but also it can sometimes get ‘swallowed up’ in pronounciation to make it sound like it isn’t there between mynd and fyny.
Yes, it is and it’s common in speech (particularly in the north) for -ai to become -a, and for the short form to be used.
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Thanks @siaronjames!
It’s sometimes difficult to know when an expression sounds the way it does because of the grammar, or because of the elision, but your answer has cleared that particular one up for me…
Similarly, I’m never really sure whether what sounds like i’w neud o is really i wneud o, because technically, aren’t they – and i neud o – all valid? I don’t suppose it matters much either way…
Thanks again!
yup, all valid in speech and all would be understood as meaning the same thing
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Not in this exact context, but I occasionally hear people on Rownd a Rownd saying Be’ ti’n da’ma?! which is translated as “What are you doing here?!” in English subtitles, and that seems to fit with what your tutor said about da chi.
But the etymology of this is a complete conundrum wrapped in a mystery to me.
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You’ve just answered your own question 
Yes, gweinyddiad and gweinyddiaeth are administration (i.e. the noun), but the adjective administrative (as shortened in admin work) is gweinyddol.
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I think it’s that gweinyddiaeth is administration as in a body of people, as in a government or council. gweinyddiad is more as in a ministering or an officiating.
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If you’re talking about admin as in paperwork, it’d be gwaith gweinyddol.
For instance, at work we have offices for cynhyrchwyr, suites for golygyddion, and an office for the team gweinyddol.
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This confused me too when I first came across it in Level 2. As far as I can tell there are two issues here.
First of all, ‘would’ (the conditional of bod) has two main variants – baswn i / baset ti etc and byddwn i / byddet ti etc – which both mean the same thing. Some regions prefer one, some the other.
Secondly, the difference between baswn i / byddwn i and faswn i and fyddwn i is that Welsh has three ‘forms’ of each tense (I don’t know what the formal word for this is, sorry):
- A positive statement (AFFIRMATIVE): I would…
- A question (INTERROGATIVE): Would I…?
- A NEGATIVE statement: I would not…
For reason to do with mutation, affirmative statements don’t mutate the first letter, so you get baswn i / bydwwn i for I would.
But interrogatives and negatives do mutate the first letter, so you get faswn i…? / fyddwn i…? (Would I…?) and faswn i ddim / byddwn i ddim (I would not).
However, sometimes people put a marker word mi or fe in front of an affirmative statement, and this affirmative marker does force the mutation, so you hear and see fe faswn ni / mi fyddwn i for ‘I would’ – and that’s what you’ve been seeing in your Sylfaen course.
Obviously, the reasons why this happens are a bit more complicated in the detail and there are a couple of wrinkles (e.g. formally I think you’re supposed to use the Aspirate Mutation with the negative, but many people don’t unless the verb begins with c- and often not then), but this is the basic explanation as far as I understand it – I hope the experts will correct any thing I’ve got wrong!
The New Course doesn’t really go into any details of this, because everybody will understand if you mix the 'b’s and 'f’s up anyway, but the Old Course does spend a fair bit of time on it. It’s one of the reasons why people recommend you do the Old Course once you’ve finished Level 2 of the New Course – it covers less ground, but it’s a bit more thorough, so it’s good revision.
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