Fab!! 
Odd question. In the last couple days I’ve gone through the first six challenges of level 3 (north). What I’m wondering is why, when you say “the second half” you use the article - yr ail hanner - but when you say “the second day” you don’t use it - ail ddiwrnod? I’m sure there’s some obscure reason - or something - but so far it makes little sense to me. (Just remembering which is which is difficult!)
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Without hearing it in context I can’t say for certain, but could it be ‘a second day’ rather than ‘the second day’, or maybe the the yr has been swallowed up as a more indistinct 'r after a vowel?
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… leading on from there: Are there any rules for the word order of compound nouns? (I think), or do we just remember which comes first in each case? We are used to hen dyn but dyn ifanc.
Here’s a live example I found (perhaps not the best):
dyddiad cau, hanner dydd & dydd gwener.
I think it’s because you’re always hearing it in the context of “the second day of the holidays”: it’s not that Welsh ditches the article from “the second day”, it’s just the usual thing of missing out all the definite articles that English uses except for the last one – in this case, the one that goes with “holidays”.
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Actually they use it in various contexts; it doesn’t seem to be that. And the vocabulary list for the challenge says specifically says “the” for both phrases, but specifically leaves out the article (yr or 'r) when the phrase is ail ddiwrnod.
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I’m not sure if we were being primed for the rest of the sentence which followed later in the challenge(?)…“ail ddwrnrod”…“yr gwylau”.
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[quote=“JohnYoung, post:3231, topic:3153, full:true”]
I’m not sure if we were being primed for the rest of the sentence which followed later in the challenge(?)…“ail ddwrnrod”…“yr gwyliau”.[/quote]
I realize that, but that isn’t always the case, even in complete sentences. Especially I’ve noticed in the vocabulary list that one has it and the other doesn’t.
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I don’t think that difference is meant to be significant. As @JohnYoung says, it’s priming for the second half of the sentence - possibly over compensating sometimes for the natural tendency of English speakers to add too many ‘y’ s. The whole section is designed to properly knock on the head the desire to say ‘yr ail ddiwrnod y gwyliau’, which of course is not very shiny Cymraeg!
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Yup, this - ail ddiwrnod y gwyliau is ‘the second day of the holidays’ - but if you want to say ‘yr ail ddiwrnod’ on its own as a standalone thing, no problem…
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Okay, so it’s just the way it’s presented in that challenge that has confused me. I can manage that. Thanks!
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TBH I think it confused me - or at least, kept catching me out! - when I was doing it. It was only when you asked that it really clicked into place consciously.
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I am definitely guilty of this!
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Yes, it doesn’t seem easy, but I am just aiming at going with the flow with these articles, so that things sound sort-of-right, rather than reasoning them out. I’m doing the same with mutations, but happy to let all of these things them correct themselves in my mind after the first attempt. That’s what I have always done in English, anyway.
I was just thinking that @tatjana, you have a head start on us, as it seems that you don’t have to use articles in Slovene. On the other hand, you are having to follow three different sets of patterns, for Slovene, Engish and Welsh 
No, we don’t use articles in Slovene however every single noun has to follow the gender what means we have at least 2 versions of nouns for each of it. For example - if we stay with what we’ve learnt in Welsh - a cat is a cat in English and we know that cath in welsh is feminine. In Slovene though we have maček = cat for masculine and mačka = cat for feminine and then conjugation is different for both genders + if there are more than 2 cats it’s different and if there are only 2 cats it’s different again for both genders … if we take a dog this is even more strange. A dog = pes for masculine and a dog = psica for feminine and here come the number with gender in conjugation again to make the differences. … the neutrals are always the same though as they can’t be any different but the number comes on the way again. So, as you see, I’m not too much ahead of you, rather opoiste way.
Oh and the “article” in Slovene would be ta or tisti for masculine, ta or tista for feminine and to or tisto for neutral, but we use this only when explaining grammar otherwise in speach (even in formal speach and writing) we leave it out unless you explecitely want to emphasize the noun (subject). Gender should always be followed and there are no exceptions even in colloquial Slovene though.
To be honest, this is extreamly hard sometimes …
This is all totally logical and I doubt you have any history of calling people psica, so can make clear that my Toffi is female without fretting that some people find the word ‘bitch’ too terrible to say, and gast likewise.Do you have neuters, or is a table male or female or are some tables male and some female?
Unfortunately “psica” can be as nasty word in Slovene as can be “bitch” in English so we rather use more “pet name” “psička” what means little female dog. “Psica” can also mark the bad all greedy and scumbag woman it depends on the context and the tone of the voice of course … Nothing bad with it in daily speach though.
Well, this duality in genders (mostly) only guilts for living beings where you can have male or female “personalities” like dog, cat, particular birds etc. The non-living things are mostly all of only one gender, being feminine, masculine or neuter. The table is feminine = “miza” while the chair is masculine (for example) = “stol”. Neuter is window = “okno”.
But now let’s return on topic and leave this thread to the Welsh language questions further on, shall we? If there’s any further interest I can open the topic about Slovene language in “Other languages” part of the forum though. but thank you for the observations and questions all.
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I read something in the Western Mail yesterday - they said “Drive Thru” doesn’t translate well into Welsh. Costa Coffi in Carmarthen used “Gyrru Trwodd” and they suggested this would confuse Welsh speakers.
I can’t imagine it would or why, but wondered if this was wrong and why or what else could be used?
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Lots of context-defined language (words whose meaning comes mostly from where and how we’ve seen/heard them used, rather than the inherent meanings of the words) is tough to translate - because you can’t offer all the moments of context in that translation…
So ‘Drive Thru’ is immediately familiar to us - from films and songs and experience - and ‘Gyrru Trwodd’ is something we almost certainly haven’t heard in films or songs or necessarily experienced before.
Having said that, most Welsh speakers would probably translate it and then ‘get’ it… and the second time they saw it, probably process without thinking…
I think there’s always room for creativity in this kind of situation - instead of translating (which is going to need experiential validation anyway) go for something that arises from the translated-into language - I saw a beautiful example recently - a bike lane somewhere in Cardiff, I think? - the English was ‘Dead Slow’ (nope, no workable way to translate that into Welsh) - the Welsh was…
‘Fel Malwen’
(‘Like a snail’)
It would take very little time before ‘Fel Malwen’ became the automatic ‘that’s what you see when it needs to be REALLY slow’ - and in due course you could even imagine someone trying to think 'God, what’s the best way to say ‘Fel Malwen’ in English?..
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On which grounds, there’d be no harm in trying something like:
Tra’n Gyrru
or
Yn dy gar
or even
Bwyd Olwyn
or stuff like that.
They should get poets in for stuff like this rather than translators…
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