Mae’n bleser gen i - It’s a pleasure
Dim ond… I believe its often said as ‘mond’ in fluid fast speech but I welcome correction from first language speakers.
Another way to sound more natural and welsh is to learn turns of phrases/phrases/idioms/proverbs etc
Many times I have been guilty of trying to directly translate into Welsh from English. For basic welsh its ok but can sound jarring from more indepth speech
yes, absolutely it is (and also seen in informal writing).
If you know any other basic shortenings in speech please list.
I now use “handi” for hanner awr wedi…although some school taught welsh speakers (parents not welsh speaking)…are bamboozled until I say the long form. I am currently learning Welsh at the “uwch…uwch” 
level but theres a lot colloquially of which I am not aware!
dwi ddim = dw i’m … is another classic shortening in speech. Can stump learners as it sounds similar to ’ dw i’n '. I listen for the rounding ‘m’ sound to differentiate from dw i’n
Yes, dwi’m is common.
As usual my mind has gone almost completely blank trying to think of other examples, but one that does come to mind is falle / ella - both from efallai (maybe/perhaps)
another classic. I remember a Cardi saying he was marked down in a school exam because he used falle (efallai - perhaps) and tamed (tamaid (a good bit) because it was just how he said it. Llym!
I’d say 'sdim … for does dim … is quite common. In the North you can also hear 's’gennai’m … for does genna i ddim …, while in the South you get 's’da fi ddim … for does gyda fi ddim …
Very timely… I’m reading Gwrach y Gwyllt (Bethan Gwanas) and it starts with two old farmers talking in a market near Dolgellau, and the beginning and ends of the sentences are incomprehensible to this beginner’s eyes… 
(hard bits in italics…)
‘Wel oedd, ti’n iawn ’fyd. Be ddigwyddodd iddi dwa?’
I’m assuming 'fyd is abbreviated hefyd, but dwa?
‘Diaw … bechod de.’
“Devil (?) poor you (?)”? Or is ‘diaw’ a variant spelling of ‘diau’, sure?
'Dow, ti’n iawn ‘fyd.’
‘He comes,…’ ?
‘Ia’n de.’
‘Yes ???’
‘Ew, oeddan tad.’
‘Yep, we did/were ???’ what’s father doing there…
Arnan ni mae’r bai am be dwch?’
‘What’s our fault, Duck??’
And this is the first page.
Still, the witch soon causes the old man’s umbrella to poke his eye out and the Welsh gets a bit easier after this…
Seriously… I’ve looked in the dictionary and can’t find anything for the words in italics. I presume they’re local dialect – any help gratefully received, thanks.
‘Wel oedd, ti’n iawn ’fyd. Be ddigwyddodd iddi dwa?’
Yes, 'fyd is an abbreviated hefyd, dwa is say/tell from dweda (like in the old tag phrase “pray tell”)
‘Diaw … bechod de.’
yes, Devil / poor thing ” and de is from ynde - “isn’t it”
'Dow, ti’n iawn ‘fyd.’
“come on” or “come now” - “come now, you’re ok too.”
‘Ia’n de.’
= iawn ynde = ok then
‘Ew, oeddan tad.’
The tad here is kind of an “indeed” tag - you’ll often hear people say Croeso tad when you thank them. I think it did originate from tad=father as in God the Father, but the common use now is more ‘indeed’.
Arnan ni mae’r bai am be dwch?’
Like dwa, (the singular form), this is also ‘say/tell’, from dwedwch
Brilliant! Frankly, I’m not surprised I only guessed a couple
Thanks very much, @siaronjames!
I think my favourite shortening is wmbo for dw i ddim yn gwybod - a tour de force of concision!
The one that stumped me the longest was rha which cropped up several times in “Tu ôl yr Awyr” and I eventually worked out to be yr haf.
Other ones I’ve come across are deuthi for dweud wrthi hi, wsos for wythnos, sna’m for does 'na ddim and all those tags like yli and sti.
And then there’s sa which is short for basai in the north and somehow denotes a negative sentence in the south. The novel “Siarad” by Lleucu Roberts has a mixture of northen and southern characters speaking colloquially, so i found that tricky at times. I was initially stuck with the southern gweud - was that gwneud or dweud? Turns out it’s dweud (or deud to northerners).
There’s a minor comedy bit in one of the Bywyd Blodwen Jones books for learners by Bethan Gwanas where the eponymous heroine is stumped by wmbo and asks her tutor what it means. He says “I don’t know,” and she thinks he can’t be that good a tutor if he doesn’t know…
yes like…sgen i’m…etc
“sgen ti dractor?” = Oes gen ti dractor? (Do you have a tractor?)
Another shortening in fast speech (dweud wrth - to tell)
Dweud wrtha = deud wrtha (north) = deutha (to tell me)
Equivalent shortening in the south/mid wales?
Some areas say Dwmbo wn i ddim/I dont know
which brings up visions of Dumbo the elephant haha
Been thinking about good translations for ‘most of all’ in Welsh
Yn bennaf oll - Most of all (pennaf - mainly/mostly) (holl - whole/all)
Seems to work well … but are there any other phrases with the same meaning?
Sentence above is also useful to see comma and adjective usuage
I find comma & adjective usage in print counterintuitive when you’ve got two adjectives qualifying the same noun. “A big, red house” tŷ mawr, coch is fine in isolation, but in the middle of a sentence the comma makes it look like it’s moving on to a new clause, and it always leads me to read it as “(He saw) a big house, red… No, damn… He saw a big, red house…”
Yes - they sound the same but are not related. Sa i in the S = dw i ddim, and you also get smo in the SW.
Basai is from buasai, while sa i and smo fi (etc) come ultimately from (doe)s (dim ohon)a i and (doe)s (di)m (ohon)o fi respectively - how’s that for contraction!!
So that’s the long and the short of it?
Possibly “bron” in the sense of just before.
Sometimes you’ve just gotta use “just”. For instance when you “just want to say something” plus a load of other things
Also jyst nawr - newydd doesn’t seem to be slick enough.