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- tyrd yma, brysia (come here, hurry)
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- 'rargian mawr (Good gracious/Good Lord)
- 'rargian mawr (Good gracious/Good Lord)
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Fantastic! : ) Really makes my day to know exactly what my dad was actually saying. Diolch o galon.
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I need help with a compound word (cyfansoddair)
I love the idea of compound words but not all are obvious!
Any idea as to what ‘caletsyth’ pertains ? It was regarding a description of a Catamaran boat…
I am assuming it means stiff or rigid? (unbending etc)
" Mae dur yn fwy caletsyth , yn gryfach a nid yw’n plygu" is another sentence seen
I can’t find it in GPC, Ap Geiriaduron, or Gweiadur, but it is one of the options in Geiriadur yr Academi for the English word “rigid”, so it looks like you’re spot on.
Etymologically it’s just going to be caled + syth (with a little caletach on the end of caled), so “hard-straight”, which seems like a pretty good way to say “rigid”.
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Quite surprised to see it used of catamarans. Would have expected to see it about inflatable boats.
(Amusingly, a reference to caletsyth in a 1939 edition of Y Llenor used it to describe trousers. Hope they hadn’t been starched too high up the leg for the sake of the wearer!)
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No, it’s purely an orthographic convention - in Welsh double consonants like n + n are not pronounced any differently from singles, even across a word-boundary (this is true in Russian as well, by the way - fun fact!). So not only is tynnu pronounced as if spelt tynu, but also by the same token byddwn i I would (be) and byddwn ni we will (be) are pronounced identically.
I like the spelling inni, but the choice between that and i ni is purely a personal one. And really there is no argument against ini except that it’s not an accepted spelling.
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Obviously I defer to your much greater knowledge, but I’d like to emphasise that I was absolutely not suggesting that the doubled consonants in writing represent a different pronounciation to a single consonant. My phrasing it as “doubling of the n sound” is a blatant mistake, for which I apologise.
No need for apologies, Rob - and I DID wonder if that was really what you meant.
No regional difference, I think. They both can mean “easy”, but there’s also a connotation with “rhwydd” of something being loose and free. Personally, it’s in that latter meaning that I’d tend to use it - so a quiz might be “hawdd” but something might be “rhwydd” to mix (it flows freely so mixes easily). But it wouldn’t be wrong to use “hawdd” for the second one here!
If you have more than a passing interest in this sort of thing, I can recommend the (fairly new) national corpus - it’s the first time we’ve had a proper, thorough record of how people actually use the language. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but just in case it’s of interest:
https://corpus.corcencc.org/?language=en
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Here’s an obscure question for 5 points!
Why in UK media do I sometimes see Welsh placenames with hyphens but not the same with names in England or Scotland.
A common example is ‘Betws-y-coed’ yet ‘Barrow in Furness’
Is this a peculiarly Welsh thing by origin/history … or just something the UK/English media do because it is not English language?
I just want to know if there’s deeper meaning to hyphen usage and how it affects place name meanings?!
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Semi-educated guess here, but I think it’s to do with aiding the reader with stress.
Wales tends to compound place names - Pontarddulais, Rhydaman, Abertridwr. When it does this, the stress is on the normal, penultimate syllable. However, for those place names where this doesn’t apply, they are traditionally semi-compounded using hyphens (see what I did there?). So, Llanfair-ym-Muallt, Cil-y-coed, Castell-paen. However, this isn’t always the case - Rhaeadr Gwy, for example, and don’t ask me what’s going on with Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr.
I’ve also noticed that names that are hyphenated on old maps are not necessarily the same on more modern maps, though this may be under the influence of the English practice.
I hope someone with a bit more depth of knowledge comes along, because, as I admitted, I can only scratch the surface of this.
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Found this. I suspect it’s where my semi-remembered knowledge above originally came from.
https://www.welshlanguagecommissioner.wales/news/why-do-we-need-hyphens-in-place-nameseur
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Very interesting - thanks for sharing! I refer people to the standardised list of place-names frequently, but it’s fascinating to know the reasoning behind the decisions.
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What is the link between hynna and hwnna/honna. It isn’t in the tables on Ask Dr Gramadeg: Hwn, Hon, Hwnna, Honna, Y Rhain & Y Rheina / This, That, These and Those – Parallel.cymru: Bilingual Welsh digital magazine (or I missed it) but my instinct is it is also used just when pointing at something or similar. In some of the examples on that page is “hynny”, also not in the tables, to confuse me more.
hwnna and honna are the male & female forms for things that are within sight - hynna is the indefinite/ungendered form.
hwnnw and honno are the male & female forms for things that are out of sight - hynny is the indefinite/ungendered form.
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Thank you @siaronjames. So, when do I use the indefinite/ungendered form? I thought (probably a helpful simplification that someone told me at some point) that everything was male/female in Welsh (unlike e.g. German with a neuter gender). Can it always be used (a get out of jail free card to avoid knowing the object’s gender), or are there certain types of object I use the ungendered version for?
Generally the indefinite/ungendered things are things like this…
Pwy oedd hynny? (when you’re asking someone who just phoned and you don’t know if it was a man or woman)
Do’n i ddim yn gwbod hynny. (when someone has told you something you didn’t know because the ‘that’ here is indefinite)
Nath hynny ddim yn gweithio (again because the ‘that’ here is indefinite)
Beth yw hynny? (when you hear a sound you don’t recognise)
There are a handful of things that can be either masculine or feminine (and sometimes the gender depends where you are), so you could use it on those, and you could also use it for a gendered item that you don’t know the gender of, but that should really be a fall-back, not an “I’ll just learn the one form” decision! 
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Ah yes, like how in German I shouldn’t make every noun diminutive so I can use “das” 
.
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I was once told that using hynna or hynny for something concrete sounded way weirder than guessing the gender and getting it wrong. If I don’t know, I just use hwn or hwnna. There’s more masculine nouns than femenine, so the odds are on my side, as is the fact that the person I’m speaking to may just let it go without noticing, or assume that I’m right and they’ve always been wrong, or just think “oh, it’s masculine where he comes from, then.”
As always, don’t let worrying about the details get in the way of having a conversation!
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I’ll just drop Ashby de la Zouch in here which is sometimes hyphenated as Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Another one is Chorlton-cum-Hardy. So some English placenames are hyphenated, but I have no idea what rule – if there is a rule! – decides whether hyphens are used or not.
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