Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

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 :smiley: )
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 :smiley:

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. :slight_smile:

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Thank you all. @robbruce that is very interesting. Early on my first guess at how possession worked in Welsh was just like that as my brain hadn’t picked up on the other half of the doubling. Language change in progress perhaps.

'Waeth heb na…"

I think this means broadly “no point …” though can’t quite get that from the meaning of the individual words. If anyone could clarify, I’d be grateful.

The context is that at the Railway Inn in Swansea this afternoon, Gwilym Bowen Rhys sang a song about a sheep, Defaid William Morgan, including the line:

Waeth heb na phlannu nionod bach Na letys na chabatsen.

Well, the only bit of illumination that I can offer is that I sometimes hear a construction like for example (Ni) waeth i mi fynd – literally along the lines of It wouldn’t be worse for me to go, so the English equivalent here is “Might as well go.”

In your example, the heb makes it all negative (like in Dw i heb glywedI haven’t heard) … so
(Ni) waeth i mi heb fynd – Might as well not go
Which conveys the meaning of “there’s no point in me going”

It’s one of those idioms that are a bit harder to grok, but the more often you hear it, the easier it’ll get.

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Thanks so much, Hendrik, that was exactly what I was looking for.

It’s in my dictionary of Welsh idioms:

Waeth heb (â) holi (N) - There’s no point in asking

So you’re spot on with the “There’s no point” @sortaottery

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I was making a cup of tea and thinking about Welsh, and I’ve ended up down a real rabbit hole.

“ddides ti = you said (singular)”, I thought… what would it be if I was speaking formally or to more people? I tried to look it up but couldn’t work out the stem - I looked at d(w)eud but the rules I came across didn’t see to correspond to what I knew… then I came across this thread - aha, I was mixing up “i” and “u” and it is starting to fall into place but still doesn’t quite fit the rules I found. Maybe it is just a spelling thing?

But why is it “ddudes ti” I have learnt in the challenges and not “dudes ti”? Is it because there is an elided particle there (like medrai → mi fedrai → - fedrai")? Or some other reason?

And while we’re at it, what is the plural/formal version of “dduest ti?” ddudoch chi?

The soft mutation always happens at the beginning of a question, and the often omitted particle is a: (A) fedri di helpu fi?Can you help me?

And, yes, you are spot on with Ddudoch chi?
(At least this is the way it’s usually pronounced in the north. The “dictionary form” is Ddwedoch chi?, and down south you’ll hear Wedoch chi?)

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Bu bron iddi hi
Bu bron iddo fo

How does this change for fi, ti, ni, nhw?