Weirdly, dafad and dafod. I never misunderstand dafad (being one of my favourite animals) but if I hear dafod, I always have to process and discount something about sheep first! (i.e. ‘cerdd dafod’ has nothing to do with sheep…)
I have to think twice about diwylliant and diwydiant too. I think of diwylliant as making people less ‘wyllt’, and diwyd is a word for conscientious or industrious. (I think.)
There’s an expression " heb flewyn o’i dafod", which I’ve read in books, meaning someone who says it as it is or sometimes maybe about someone who speaks without a hint of saes. I’ve never heard anyone say it until last week on the radio and the person said what sounded to me like “di-flewyn a dafad” - I expect it’s the same expression and it’s pronounciation, or maybe there is a variation for sheared sheep??
A very common one for me and slightly embarrassing really is saying mor, when I mean mwy. It must be the English causing the confusion, but do it all the time and can’t shake it.
Today I did Challenge 1, my first lesson in almost a year. I stopped early last year when I was involved in a particularly intense trial I was defending, then I retired, and moved across Ontario, and I just got out of the habit, so if I have questions about SSIW now, I have nobody but myself to blame. However, here goes. The site has changed a lot since I last visited. The various levels seem to have been replaced by Challenges 1 through 25, at least that’s what I could find. Is there anywhere to go after you have completed Challenge 25?
At the moment (although we really would like to find the time to change this around a bit) Level 1 has 26 challenges, and Level 2 has 25 challenges, and Level 3 currently has about 14 for the south and I think 19 for the north, with more coming in the not-too-distant future.
watching the news last night on S4C and the MPs using Welsh in Parliament they kept mentioning Sant Steffan. It took me a while with subtitles to catch on but i think they were referring to Westminster. Did I get that right and if so, why is Westminster Sant Steffan in Welsh?
You did indeed. San Steffan is Westminster because the palace was dedicated to St Stephen (as in boxing day). So the palace of Westminster is Palas San Steffan
I had the same question, the first time I came across this usage. It seems to be a cross-linguistic thing, to at least some extent, to refer to an authority by the name of some associated place (the White House, a Downing Street spokesperson): At around the same time, I was reading some news about the situation in Catalonia, and it kept referring to the Palace of Moncloa - I eventually guessed/looked up that it meant the (official residence of the) Prime Minister of Spain…
I learned the Welsh word for flea the other day -chwannen, chwain = fleas! But my dogs were always much more likely to pick up ticks and I can’t find out the right word for the crawly, spidery, miniscule, blood-sucker kind of tick. Maybe nobody wants to consult the Milfeddyg (Vet) in Welsh, but I am now niggled by not knowing. Can anyone tell me what that sort of tick is yn Gymraeg?