I was going to say that if you can’t hear the difference, it shows it might not matter too much if you get them wrong, but Richard’s examples do show that we can hear the difference in English. so I guess it is practice. I am lucky, as I can hear and say the difference in both languages, but I had terrible trouble in Punjabi where the ‘soft d’ is harder rhan dd and softer than d!! (Friends called their little son Dipinder with a ‘soft’ d!)
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Fair comment, although I have to think hard when pronouncing “thus”. As a side note, in Newcastle we had a teacher from Yorkshire by the name of Mrs Atherton, who used to get annoyed by our hard th pronunciation of her name.
Yeah, some words & names will depend on accent - it seems to me both Atherton and Adderton could be phonetically plausible, although I’m sure we’d all object if we felt people were getting our names wrong. Similarly, you’ll hear both cloths and cloddz, depending on the speaker; but I think the sounds at the start of words are fairly stable.
I think we wear clothes. Clodds. Cloths are for cleaning with or making clothes from!
I’d agree with you - but some speakers, depending whereabouts in Britain they come from, wouldn’t. We all have clothes (with a -ddz sound), but some people would use cloths (cloddz) to clean the car. I think it might be a NE-England thing (Durham, Tyneside, etc.).
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What happens to the ‘o’? I say clōthes for what i wear and a short ‘o’ in cloths for cleaning the car or fabric in rolls what the clothes are made of!
Sorry – didn’t mean to be obtuse, it’s just trying to allow for what symbols will show up reliably on most/all devices and be meaningful to most/all readers. What I meant is that for me – and I think, from what you said, for you – the differences between ‘clothes’ and ‘cloths’ are (1) long ‘o’ / short ‘o’; (2) dd / th; (3) z / s. But for some English accents, ‘cloths’ (with a short ‘o’) ends in the same consonant sounds as ‘clothes’, i.e. -ddz where I – and, I think, you – would say -ths, so the only difference is long/short ‘o’.
(Standard English [klǝʊðz] vs [klɔþs] rather than regional [klɔðz]. But I think those accents still do ‘cloth’ like most other speakers, i.e. singular [klɔþ], plural [klɔðz].)
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I don’t think you came across as obtuse 
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You are not obtuse and I could not help but remember the rhyme including ‘cast not a clout til May be out’. I was told clout (pronouced clowt) meant a bit of clothing or a cloth!
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Regarding Caer Urfa: Fascinating stuff there. I was brought up relatively near-by and never know about that name. It sounds very Welsh. I guess that the building in Oxford might have been named after it by an expat from S Shields. I have noticed a B&B on the internet with the same name.
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My mum asked me what I want for Christmas today and I was thinking that I would really like a book to help me with my Welsh. I notice a lot of people on here have recommended Gareth King’s books . Which would be the best one for me to get do you think ?
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I got his Intermediate Welsh and it’s very good. I think you’d probably learn something from any of them. This one is a good length an covers loads of great stuff
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Some more of those “over” type words: This time - “throughout”:
ar hyd prep. ar hyd a lled cmb. ledled adv.
I find the weather forecast to be good for these. Is it possible that I’ve heard a shortened form of at hyd a lledd, sounding something like “hyledd”?
Mmmm… don’t think so…
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Ah found it at last, I was getting confused with the adjective “helaeth” for “extensive”, etc. I remember Rhian Haf including it in one of her weather forecasts:
“dros rhan helaeth y wlad”, which I guess equates to “over an extensive part of the country”.
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Two quick ones:
Is “O pob oedran?” right for “of every age” (People of every age compete in pogo hops each year)
and
Is “holl ban y byd” - every corner of the world?
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‘o bob oedran’
‘o bedwar ban y byd’
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oh one more - “yn y fforwm” neu “ar y fforwm”?
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Yes and yes. ‘O bob oedran’?