I think we have to say as well that in many spoken varieties of Welsh, particularly with the oedd tense, the base-forms are used without r- or d- indiscriminately for statement, question and negative - for example o’n i = I was (FAR more frequent overall than ro’n i, by the way), o’n i? = was I? and o’n i ddim = I wasn’t. This is all perfectly OK and natural in speech, though not usually done in writing.
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Among the things that are confusing mostly because in English they’re translated with the same word, there’s then.
.Wedyn is clear for me now (related to a sequence of events i time).
However I’m not too sure of when at the end of a sentence you should use felly o’r 'te.
Maybe also because I can’t really find what te stands for!
When these are at the end of a sentence they are just a tag - in English we might say “I’ll wait until you phone, then.”
Another translation is ‘therefore’ - putting “therefore” at the end of that sentence would probably make more sense to a non-English speaker (because that’s really what the “then” means here), but it sounds terribly “posh” to say “therefore” as a tag in English!
Curiously enough, “felly” can also mean “so” - and if you listen to some Irish dialects, they often end a sentence with “so” - “I’ll wait until you phone, so” 
'te is a shortening of “ynteu”, and again, it’s the same kind of tag as ‘felly’, meaning then/therefore.
Basically, you never have to use these “then” tags, as they don’t really add any meaning to the sentence, but of course it’s handy to be able to recognise them when others use them, and using them yourself makes your Welsh sound more natural.
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Oh at this point I understand that they’re basically the same and you can use whichever one you prefer…so? 
(I didn’t know about this in some Irish accents, just felt like trying it since I’ve just been reading a few posts about Irish language today).
The fact is that I use their Italian equivalent a lot, even though it’s not necessary, and I just miss not having anything to say make the sentence feel complete!
I forgot to say you may also hear ‘felly’ shortened to " 'lli " at the end of a sentence - same tag thing again though
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Yeah, sort of “isn’t it” / init in English. Amen, That’s all.
Incidentally I only just learnt that “the noo”/Niss (now) in Scottish is actually used for the same thing - “So it is”. Deffo
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What would natural words for the following be please?
- To Update (I’d like to update you) Is it diweddara or something?
-
Holder as in season ticket holder, cup holder, etc. I’d like to say dalwr, but sounds like payer.
Diolch
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Hi John,
On the radio - which is usually fairly natural - but not always…I have heard:
-
Diweddaru for update
-
Deiliad for hold in this sense eg deiliad tocyn tymor - season ticket holder…I thought it was a variant of dal at first but I looked it up and it didn’t seem to be - although I still use that to remember it!
Rich
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sorry for the slow reply, have been offline for a while
@gareth-19 and John, I asked my local Welsh speaker friend, and she confirmed it’s ‘what are you doing here’ (Shortened version of gwneud…we’d already worked that out), but very importantly, it’s not a nice thing to say, and when she’d explained it that locally it’s used more like, ‘look what’s the cat dragged in’, i equated it to the aggressive easterenders type of ‘woss goin’ on’!!
So be warned!! We’d never get that flavour from a dictionary, would we. I checked what she’d say if she was pleasantly suprised to bump into someone, and interestingly, she had to think for a second or two, before she said ‘be’ ti’n neud ‘ma’, but her hesitancy made me realise that some phrases that are almost automatic in English, just aren’t in Welsh…the moral of the story…?
Let’s stick to ‘wwwwww… helo!!! neis dy weld ti!!’
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Hi all. I always get tied in knots when I try to say “nice to see you”. On the hoof my English-speaking brain keeps wanting to say something like neis i weld ti but I’m guessing it doesn’t need a preposition so maybe it should be neis dy weld di or maybe neis gweld ti but they both sound a bit clunky. I imagine it’s a fairly common & formulaic phrase but I haven’t been able to find a translation anywhere.
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Oh hang on, not having read all 7000 odd posts on this thread I’ve just seen that my question is answered directly above. D’oh!
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OK, here’s a couple of things I found:
Script of BBC learners drama, Ysbyty Brynaber -
Braf i dy weld di nôl, Jenny.
Nice to see you back, Jenny
Y Cwm lyrics - Huw Chiswell
Mae’n braf cael dy weld di gartref fel hyn.
Its nice to get to see you (at?) home like this.
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Noswaith da pawb.
Mae gyda fi gwple o cwestiwn… regarding some of the lefel 3 challenge 5 content for the southern course.
- Why is The second half of the second day said as, “ail hanner o’r ail ddiwrnod”. I expected "yr ail hanner… " fue the definite article…
- The Cymraeg for “slower than we thought” is something like, “yn arafach nage ni’n meddwl”. I can’t get my head around this sentence, can some one explain why it’s in this word order
Diolch.
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The first one is an example of possession (genitive I believe 
) - equivalent to the man’s hat always being said as the hat of the man, het y dyn - which is equivalent to ail hanner yr ail ddiwrnod, in this case. You get the ‘of’ and the extra ‘the’ for free as part of the deal with this consfruct!
The second is a nag - meaning ‘than’ in the comparative sense - o’n ni’n meddwl - we thought.
Rich
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Thanks Rich, but why is the second sentence not something like “yn fwy araf nage ni’n meddwl”? My brain sees the actual answer as “slowly than we thought”, which in English is not easy to understand.
…the ‘ach’ ending is equivalent to ‘er’ in English here - arafach = slower. Alternatively you can use mwy to achieve the same effect, so they are both options.
Rich
Ah… The penny drops. Many thanks for both explanations.
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Vocabulary question.
Since dysgu means learning, studying (and teaching, but it’s not my concern at the moment): what’s the most common way to specify one or the other without sounding like a medieval book? 
For example:
if you’re talking with another learner (that’s one of the most common situations happening to me!) and want to share experiences, you may want to say you’ve been learning a language since 1, 3 or even 10 years - that’s fine.
Then you mwy like specify you’ve studied through a course for 6 month, then stopped actively studying it, for say 1 year - meaning you were not following lessons or going to a class, doing homework, practicing and so on.
But you did not stop learning it or using it even though without a specific method or continuity - e.g. in everyday life, reading a few articles or books, watching TV, listening to radio and songs for example.
Which words would you use?
To draw the distinction, I’d use astudio and dysgu - after all, you can learn without studying (and also study without learning! 
). For instance, my pathway was doing various levels of class lessons from 1996 to 2003, but I’ve certainly been still learning ever since! So I could say “Nes i astudio’r Gymraeg mewn dosbarthau am saith mlynedd, ond dwi wedi dysgu llawer yn naturiol ers hynny hefyd.”
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Exactly that!
Thanks, I think i’m going to adapt your sentence to my pathway and use it myself a lot.
p.s. I guess studying without learning is the right option for my German! 
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