you’re definitely not missing something blindingling obvious.
If I use a slightly different example:
gyda
gyda often takes the contracted endings:
with me, him, her, you etc. are easy enough: gyda fi, fe, hi, chi etc.
with someone’s brother for example:
gyda’i frawd - with his brother
gyda’i brawd - with her
gyda’ch brawd - with your
gyda’n brawd - with our
gyda’u brawd - with their
so, often all “ei” bits are dropped. If you don’t drop it, you’ll be absolutely fine and understood and grammatically correct too. So don’t get bogged down by it
diolch anthony! i thought i could do what you’ve outlined above, but then had doubts, and sometimes the worry is that some ways of doing things may be essential to the meaning.
thanks loads
It’s not just ein and eich, it’s ei and eu as well, but I can see why you’re confused, and the confusion is MY FAULT. I should have added in the previous paragraph (on ei and eu) that they drop the e after vowels. My bad!
You also canu corn, and those 3 (harp, piano & horn) are certainly the main ones that you hear with canu (you’d certainly more often hear chwarae gîtar, chwarae dryms, chwarae ffidl, etc), but it’s acceptable to chwarae harp, piano or horn or to canu other instruments.
Thanks for the reply Gareth, I’d reread that section so many times, I was doubting my ability to understand English let alone contract a possesive adjective!
Diolch Siaron eto. Your profile is interesting, from Monmouth now living in Caernarfon, reminds me of the idiom (for ‘throughout Wales, all over the country’) o Fon i Fynwy, well it’s only a short stretch of water between Ynys Mon and the town of the Cofi’s! (used to live there also…great pub quiz question that, which UK town has inhabitants known as Cofi’s…99 out of 100 say Coventry!)
In regard to canu and chware for musical instruments, my opinion is that any string instrument - violin, etc - should be canu. It just seems more appropriate to me. Not contradicting the general idea that either is good for any of them, just my thoughts.
I think I prefer ‘canu’. Dwi’n dysgu canu’r piano. A lot of pop songs in Welsh talk about ‘chwarae’r gitar’, ‘Gitar Yn Y To’ by the great Maffia Mr.Huws to name one!
ok so I’m sure this is another one of those “there is more than one way to say the same thing” cases but:
mas neu allan? Ga i dweud “mynd allan” neu “mynd mas” i meddwl yr un peth? / Can I say “mynd allan” or “mynd mas” to mean the same thing? Does allan=mas?
Thank you so much as usual Siaron! I thought it was that. That was also my first use of the word meddwl to mean “mean” rather than “think” so hopefully is made sense (I still don’t get that it can have two meanings with one word!)
I think the examples in the challenges are:
Dw i’n meddwl - I think
So hynny yn meddwl - that doesn’t mean
During a slightly too in-depth conversation yesterday, for some reason when I started to loose the thread, I just came out with “Dwi ddim yn deall yn hollol”. My friend seemed surprised/(hopefully) impressed that I said it.
In my mind, I was saying: “I dont fully understand”.
I was thinking about what they say about breadmaking “The wetter, the better” and realised I wasn’t too sure how to do those “the…the…” structures in Welsh. I thought of “Wlypach ydy well, medden nhw,” but I’m also thinking that there’s something like “cyn mor…cyn mor…” or something like that?
If I wanted to emphasis what I was doing, instead of saying just O’n i’n siarad Cymraeg neithiwr, would it be Siarad Cymraeg o’n i’n, neithiwr, or Yn siarad Cymraeg o’n i, neithiwr? I’m torn between feeling the first one sounds OK and feeling that they’re both a bit weird. In support of the first one I’m sure I’ve heard something like mae o yn as a complete clause, in contexts where you might say in English, say, “You told me he doesn’t like cricket, but he does.”
