My suggestion for the second example would be:
“It would have been better if I’d been quicker” Mi fasai fo wedi bod yn well taswn i wedi bod yn gyflymach.
You could use “byddai” instead of “basai” but I was taught the “taswn i… faswn i” pattern in Welsh classes long before I did SSiW.
But I’m happy to be corrected by people who are better at grammar and complex tenses than I am.
Sorry. I’m not good on grammar or as to the why of things. I was just looking at the example in the book which insisted on both instances of bod.
No worries, that’s what this thread is for. I expect one of our resident experts will chime in if needed.
Thanks both! I should have spotted the need for 'byddwn i … ‘swn i’!
(My original attempt was to try to translate ‘It would been better for me to have been quicker’ as a synonym for 'should have, but I changed the English to include ‘if’ at the last moment and didn’t adjust the Welsh which makes a big difference…)
I wonder about the second bod in the first sentence. It looks like the concept is “I should be in the state of having been quicker”.
Thanks again!
The ‘double bod’ is because there is no verb-noun for ‘should’, so it acts differently to all the verb-nouns we’re used to using.
Dylwn i fod wedi bod yn gyflymach is broken down as
dylwn i fod = I should have
wedi bod = been
yn gyflymach = quicker
but it’s worth mentioning that while that is the correct way to say it, you probably will hear people say dylwn i wedi bod yn…, because basically people are often lazy colloquially!
That makes sense. Thanks, @siaronjames!
I shall rely on the ‘I was just being colloquial’ defence in future.
As I do with the various mutations with AFF / INT / NEG inflected verbs, which I spent hours trying to assimilate, when (almost) everybody (almost always) just shoves a soft mutation in regardless.
Now I come to think of it, doesn’t @garethrking have a whole section in Modern Welsh called the Soft Mutation Shove?
Thanks again!
“I ought to be after being quicker.” (In the Irish-English idiom of “I was after doing” something for “I had done it.”) To be and being, both needed.
I heard an Irish character on television say “What’s after happening here?”
Since that’s the same pattern as Welsh “Beth sydd wedi digwydd yma?” my guess was that Irish Gaelic being Celtic as well, it uses the same pattern, and has influenced the way English speakers in Ireland say some things. Which I find to be very cool.
I love languages!
I wanted to know what “sai’n” is a contraction of and I found this on a different forum:
(Welsh: sai | WordReference Forums)
‘sai’n’ is a contraction of ‘does dim ohona i’, literally, ‘none of me is’
Because it is more of a spoken colloquialism mostly used in South Wales, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information available online. So, can anyone confirm the accuracy of the above explanation? Maybe @garethrking - If you have a free moment 
Yes, that’s it.
You might find some of the comments in this thread Short Form and Sai'n etc helpful too.
I was thinking about the “I’m after doing something” which places the speaker on a time-line after an event and I started wondering if there was an “I’m before doing something” as well?
Probably “I’m yet to do something” I suppose…
I don’t know about that, but you can certainly say “I’m without doing something” (dw i heb wneud) for “I haven’t done” (with an option on the ‘yet’) as an alternative to “I am not after” (dw i ddim wedi)
Automagic gives wrthot ti
Challenge eleven gives i ti
When the sentence say ask you. Is this where it can be either, automagic is the updated version, so i just thought l’d check.
Diolch.
Whether it’s gofyn i ti or gofyn wrthot ti comes up fairly frequently. E.g.
As I understand it, the first is more correct, and the second more colloquial and very common, so you’ll hear both and you can use both.
Thank you.
I’ve been seeing some cutesy cartoon Welsh dragons lately, and got to thinking about adjective order (“green great dragons can’t exist in English” etcetera). If I wanted to describe them in Welsh, would bach come before or after coch? And also do we mutate every adjective belonging to a feminine noun, or just the one right next to it?
Draig goch bach? Draig fach goch? Dreigiau cochion bach ciwt?
When ordering adjectives, it’s size - colour - quality, and for a single female noun, you have to mutate every adjective. So a “cute small red dragon” would be draig fach goch ciwt (I’d lean to not mutating the english-loaned ciwt to giwt)
For further reading, please see this reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/learnwelsh/comments/fag3w9/welsh_grammar_trefn_ansoddeiriau_order_of/?rdt=49804
Diolch, Hendrik 
While trying the new languages on the app, I’m also trying the Automagic Welsh course, from time to time (South again, sorry Gogs!) 
I just came across “You said”.
It sounded like “ddwedest ti” when I heard it, and now that the sentences can also be seen on the screen I can see it really is “ddwedest ti”.
I have to admit that when I did Level 1 I was completely lost and coufused with mutations, and I don’t remember how it was there. 
But now I would definitely say “dwedest ti” (dywedaist ti) unless it’s a question, a negative sentence or preceded by mi or fe, which is not the case here.
Any hints of why it so?
The ddwedaist comes from where the preceding fe has dropped off but left the mutation it caused. It’s common for that to happen in speech, but yes, to be technically correct a positive statement should be fe ddwedaist (mi ddwedaist in the N) or dwedaist if you’re not using the mi/fe.