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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Weston-super-Mare is the one that springs strsight to mind
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I read that in English, the hyphen is used to make a single compound word without changing the stress, replaced with a space when you want separate words: Newcastle upon Tyne and yet Upton-upon-Severn. Yeah, I’ll go with that, Newcastle is definitely one word (Nyucassel), unlike the other new castles. Wheras “upon Tyne” feel like two spaced out words. I guess that’s what is happening with Pen-y-bont ar Ogwr, plus the stress thing. And yet just down the M4, or up the A473, is Pencoed! I remember our Welsh teacher suggesting we just accept Castell-nedd Port Talbot without over-thinking it (or should that be over thinking 
)
I couldn’t find much more online, othe than the document that Rob posted. Except that in Australia, there is an actual style guide; where
(in Australia) there doesn’t seem to be any hyphenation or possessive punctuation
Good post Tintin. I dont know if you are secretly in the same Sunday class as me, but for the benefit of others - although it was suggested that Rhwydd is Southern, and some of my friends do prefer “rhwydd” to “hawdd” - rhwydd was used in a sentence where guns were easily/freely available.
Is “f” at the end of words usually silent? I am sure when " yr hynaf" was introduced the f was pronounced but in later challenges I am not hearing it. I never noticed the f at the end of “adref” and only realised it was there when I saw it written down. Finally I am not certain whether or not I can hear an f at the end of “cryf” on the Coffi Du lyrics (could totally be my own personal theme tune, thanks for that intro).
Well spotted. Dropping the final f is very, very common (almost universal?) in informal Welsh.
Listen out for ara(f), cynta(f), ha(f) and gaea(f), for example.
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What is the “go” in “Maen nhw’n edrych fel llond llaw go iawn.”?
The word go usually appears as an intensifier, with a meaning along the lines of pretty, somewhat, rather, but as far as I am aware, these days it usually appears in set idioms like go iawn for real – so llond llaw go iawn is a real handful.
(Other usages I know of are go lew for so-so and go brin for rarely)
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I’ve also heard “go dda”.
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Another from me, sorry I have a lot of questions. Eich … chi, ein … ni. But sometimes without the chi or ni. Is there a rule for when it is added or not, or is it simply for emphasis? Or something else?
In formal writing these echoed pronouns are generally left out, so they are more a thing of spoken language. It’s largely a matter of personal preference.
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Adding to @Hendrik’s reply - the echoing pronouns can be very useful to make it clear. In the south, it’s common to say something like o’n i’n siarad gyda’n merch instead of o’n i’n siarad gyda fy merch “I was speaking to my daughter”. That can sound very much like O’n i’n siarad gyda’n merch “I was speaking to our daughter” but if you add the i for the first case and ni for the second, it clarifies which you mean.
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Further addition (at the risk of making this sound more complex than it is - it’s not something you need to worry about; you’ll absorb this kind of thing by osmosis as you use your Welsh more): If you want to sound like a teenager, you can use just the personal pronoun and forget about the possesive.
Car fi - my car.
Tŷ ni - our house.
etc.
Caution: This is very sloppy, slangy (but nevertheless real) Welsh and might be frowned upon by some purists. 
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