I certainly received quite a few blank looks when I asked for a “disgled o de” at the Eisteddfod on Ynys Môn
I make a point of putting both on my shopping list! (no wonder we end up with too much milk in the fridge…).
(My wife, although technically as English as I am, spent 5 or 6 years growing up in Wales, primary school years, and learned a fair bit of Welsh. But although she was in N. Wales (Flint, actually an English speaking town), she’s a “llaeth” girl and won’t let me get away with llefrith. Guess they were teaching llaeth in her school.).
You will find pockets of ‘South’ in NE Wales because many miners from S Wales moved up there to work in the area’s coal mines - the Coedpoeth accent for example sounds much more South than North.
Quick question, so I was taught Does Gen i ddim for I don’t have/I don’t own , but then later on it randomly changes to Sgonon i ddim etc (spelling wrong I know) but just wondering what this difference is and why there two different ways really, plus I find the course (so far) very biase to formal speaking when I reality speaking with friends and family it would be ti instead of chi for example
That sounds like the plural, so that “i” is really “ni” (we).
There are various ways of writing this, but what you are hearing is a slightly slangy version of
“does gynnon ni ddim”. (we don’t have…)
It appears to be quite common for fluent / native Welsh speakers to drop the “doe”, and run the “s” into whatever form of “gan” is being used.
And also, you will quite often hear “gen” pronounced “gin”, at least from Northern speakers, e.g.
“sgin i ddim…” (I don’t have).
I stumbled upon this today:
A phan rwy’i am ddim translated as And when I want nothing
a phan (=pan) = and when (by the way, I’m also proud to have figured out today that p, c and t mutate after a - or at least hope I guessed it right!)
am ddim = nothing (or is it just ddim?)
how can rwy’i possibly mean I want?
@mikeellwood is correct. sgynnon ni ddim… is the plural for ‘we don’t have.’ To clarify and this from Level 2 - Challenge 2
Nag oes, does gynnon ni ddim is the proper plural form but as Mike stated, and Aran does as well, it often abbreviates to what you heard, na, sgynnon ni ddim… for 'No, we don’t have…
I’m still a learner so my translation could be totally wrong.
First, catching (ph)an is a mutation of ‘pan’ is fantastic. It takes me awhile to figure it out when I read it. I, too, feel proud when I catch a mutation
I thought am ddim meant ‘free,’ and rwy, after looking it up, I think is some derivation of rhoi - to give. I translate this as, “And when to give it (away) for free.”
Yes, that’s a tricky one. The wanting bit hides in the word am, and so far I have only seen it followed by a verbnoun:
Dw i am fynd adre’ - I want to go home
It’s a bit hard to spot here, as am ddim means for free: Coffi am ddim - Free coffee.
But the sentence Dw i am ddim doesn’t mean “I am for free”, it means I want nothing
(Rwy’ i is just another form of I am)
Thanks a lot!
I guess I should remember not to jump to conclusions because I know one meaning of a word, and also be more patient reading all dictionary entries and translations, but until then…I’m so glad there’s this forum to find help!
However just one tiny curiosity left:
I’ve seen Rwy’n many times before but why is this Rwy’i? Just like dw i in your examples, in fact…
the reason why I’m trying to avoid as much as possible to translate word by word (both to and from Welsh) is that I realized you can often find several different meanings that seem to totally make sense!
Or sometimes they don’t, but then I try to convince myself that they might be exceptions or slang or an artistic touch. Like my first spontanoeus translation as “and when I am for free”.
Sometimes it’s really tricky!
You’ve had the correct answer about ‘am’ here - the ‘rwy’i’ written structure is an old-fashioned contraction of ‘rwyf i’ - I don’t think I’ve ever seen it outside of a book, and a pretty old one at that.
Rydw in isiau ? Ah sorry Aran i didnt see you reply.
Well I’m trying to dissect sentences written by natives and for which I also have a translation. Like my beloved lyrics booklet, where I find expressions that I’m sure not in study books , and also, from time to time, unusual words that have probably been chosen for their sound or to fit the metric or something like that.
I have to admit I kinda enjoy the idea of speaking with such an odd mix of a vocabulary!
I usually start trying to guess what the sentence means.
Then check a mix of dictionary and Google Translate.
Then compare results with official translation.
And then…ask here because I don’t understand how they can differ so much!
While watching a video I heard something that seemed something like d’ya know what I mean?
The closest I could get ti the sounds I heard is:
ti'n gwbod beth sy da fi?
It mostly makes sense, but what’s the sy da (or whatever else it might be instead?)
That sounds like it’s probably right – I’ve only heard the Northern version be’ sy’ gen i, but as the only difference is Southern gyda for Northern gan it looks OK to me.
Sy is short for sydd, which is the special form of the verb ‘is’ that you use in relative clauses – it basically means ‘which is’.
So Ti’n gwbod beth sy 'da fi would be “Do you know what [it is] that is with me?” or “Do you know what I’ve got?” and it is used idiomatically to mean “Do you know what I mean?”
Thank you, RichardBuck. I’ve never quite understood ‘sydd.’ This helps tremendously.
Shwmae - Hi all
Quick question!
I hear different Welsh speakers say the placenames Aberystwyth (aber-ist … or aber-uh’st) and Powys ( po-wys … or … Pow-ys) differently?
Is there a correct pronunciation for them or both ways fine? Am I hearing dialectal influence?
Going by ‘pure’ Welsh phonetics, aber-uh’st and po-wys could be said to be technically better, but basically…
yes and yes
Diolch!
So who says the non-technical version? I heard the less technical version from people living in Mid Wales growing up, but confusingly my welsh speaking family would say different pronunications for the same place when speaking English or Welsh!? never got an explanation lol