Although these days it doesn’t really have a separate existence - only found as a component in the compound preposition.
A bit like cilydd - now only ever found as a component in various expressions.
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What did cilydd mean on its own? I was taught but forgotten 
Cilydd = companion/fellow to my mind
Exactly.
Cyfaill probably, these days.
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Hi
next week my mum is staying with her friends in Cardigan. I want to ring her there. In English I’d say “hi Marged / Terwyn, Vicky here, …”
Does a literal translation into Welsh make sense or is there another Welsh casual phrase to tell the person answering who I am?
Vicky sy 'ma ! 
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You’re not Vicky! You can’t fool us!
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See what you did there… 
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this made me laugh out loud in a very quiet office
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As Gareth says…Vicky sy’ 'ma … short for Vicky sydd yma (Vicky which/that is here)
SHWMAE MAM ANNWYLYD?!?!?! is a more energy rich phrase with a hint of cringe
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More than a hint, surely?
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Just making sure after something that I read suggested otherwise.
My understanding is
Mae cath ar y wal = A cat is on the wall
Me 'na cath ar y wal = There is a cat on the wall
Both expressions should be ok in all regions of Wales?
Am I correct in the expressions and assuming the N & S thing?
Cywir
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Yes - but there’s a mutation in the second one (after 'na)
Mae 'na gath ar y wal
These two expressions in Welsh are equivalent - while of course the literal translation of the first one - a cat is on the wall - is shaky English. But not shaky Welsh!
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Is areithiau the right word for speeches in a wedding sense?
I’ve only known it to mean lectures and that’s not the sense I want to get over…the foreboding…
Hello.
As well as having learned Welsh in my 20s, I am also learning to play a musical instrument.
In Welsh, there is an idiom for playing a musical instrument “canu”. Dwi’n canu’r piano ond mae Aled yn canu’r feiolin a’r cello.
However I have also heard the usual word for play used in relation to playing musical instruments ("chwarae ")and I’ve never been sure in all this time which is grammatically correct , or maybe both are?
Ydw i’n dysgu canu neu chwarae’r piano?
Diolch/thanks
Yes David, you can use both canu and chwarae and they are both grammatically correct.
Personally I like canu best because the idea of “singing an instrument” is lovely. However, I play percussion so chwarae is definitely the one I use for that! 
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Diolch yn fawr, thank you for your response Siaron. Often pianists and piano teachers alike talk about ‘making the piano sing’ and the expression is in common use on Radio 3 so I see the connection.
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Araith is fine for a wedding speech.
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hi,
i hope someone can help with a possessive adjectives question, i’m getting really confused with the vowel dropping.
working my way through basic welsh and modern welsh, for instance:
ga i’ch helpu chi?
newch chi’n cefnogi ni
but
allwch chi eu hagor nhw
so i checked my modern welsh book, to find that ein and eich lose the 'ei when following a word with a vowel, which is fine and easy enough to learn, but i’m confused because in an earlier exercise in basic welsh i came across:
'mae robert yn ‘sgwennu’i ganaeon ei hun’
so my question is, why did the robert sentence drop the ‘e’ after sgwennu if it’s only ‘ein’ and ‘eich’? is there something blindingly obvious i’m missing? when i first did the exercise i tried to drop/contract the vowels of all the pronouns following a vowel…!