Dwi yma* … theres no need for ‘yn’ between them. 
yn ystod - during … nice little phrase you could throw in with some of these
Decades Question
As Sara said … Wythdegau = eighties … you can shorten to ‘80au’ in shorthand form
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I don’t know what the general rule is, but if 3M is a brand name, I would say it in English as “Three Em”. I’m pretty sure that native Welsh speakers would say it the English way.
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I suspect that you’re quite right - it had crossed my mind - but once it had occurred to us to wonder whether letters were masculine or femenine we wanted a dictionary to settle it for us. Of course, if I’d remembered w driphlyg from web addresses the softening should have given me a clue - although I might then have been tempted to go for M driphlyg which, I think we’d all agree, would definitely be a step too far
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That’s a good point about w driphlyg indicating that m would be feminine. Looking in the dictionary, a letter, i.e. a character, not an epistle, is “llythyren” and that is feminine. So by extension one might assume that all letters are feminine, though I have learned that making assumptions about how a language works sometimes leads you astray! 
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Ah, yes! I did know that - we even used the word llythyren in the course of the conversation, but it didn’t even occur to me that it might be a clue. But, equally, you’re right about assumptions! (We did get as far as assuming that, if one letter were feminine, they would all be: we felt that having to go through the whole alphabet memorising arbitrary genders might be a bit much, even for Welsh…)
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Are:
… bod rhaid i mi…
… bod angen i mi…
… bod isio i mi…
… bo fi angen…
all pretty much equivalent? I feel like I generally know when “dw i angen” feels right and when “mae rhaid i mi” feels right (not that my feeling necessarily matches to the native instinct), but the “bod angen” and “bod isio” forms are throwing a spanner into my mental model, and that is completely ignoring gorfod for a moment (which I think has a stronger sense of duty/lack of choice in the matter).
Under the basic premise that the lines between wanting, needing and having to are somewhat blurry, yes, these constructions are conceptually quite similar.
Note that bod angen i mi and bo fi angen are really the same. The first is reflecting that angen is actually a noun, and the second is the use of angen as a verb.
And one thing to keep in mind is that if you are talking about supposition, you have to use rhaid:
Dw i ddim yn gweld Mrs Jones, rhaid bod hi wedi mynd adre. – I don’t see Mrs Jones, she must have gone home.
But otherwise, usually you will still be understood if you use one instead of the other.
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Thank you!
I suppose an expansion to my question is, apart from the example you gave regarding supposition, are there any circumstances where one would be more idiomatic than the other?
Ah, I suspected as much, good to have it confirmed.
I hadn’t thought about using rhaid in this way at all. Thank you again.
Please could some one tell me if I need to learn to say gofyn wrthot ti or having looked at the various comments including Aaron’s which says gofyn i ti is actually correct and becomes the ‘norm’ in later challenges do I just forget it and try to say gofyn i ti instead as standard? I’m learning Northern Welsh.
You can just say “gofyn i ti” and it will be fine.
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fabulous, that seems sooooooo much easier and I need all the help I can get!
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Can anyone help me with when to use ‘bod ti’, ‘bo ti’ and ‘dy fod di’ etc.?
For example, in Level 2, Lesson 1 there is the sentence:
Dwedodd y ferch bod ti’n hoffi’r ffilm 'na
(or it might be bo ti’n)
I’m confused about when you only need to say bod and when you need to say dy fod di, fy mod i, eu bod nhw, ei fod e etc.
Thanks
Sorry, another question from me:
Are there certain verbs that you cannot use the short-form past tense for?
I think I have read that you have to use bod with hoffi and meddwl e.g. Ro’n i’n hoffi But not hoffais i.
A sentence I heard in Lesson 1 of Level 2 was:
I didn’t understand.
I said Ddeallais i ddim but the correct answer was Nes i ddim deall
I think I’m confused about when to use gwneud to make the past tense and when to use the short-form. I think I’m OK with using bod (ro’n i, ro’t ti etc.) although I’m unsure when to say ro’n and when to say roeddwn
I think - I may be wrong - that they’re essentially equivalent, but dy fod di is “correct” and bo’ ti more… casual. So the difference is that you say the first when you’re on your linguistic best behaviour, but the second when you’re slumming it
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Any difference there is tiny nuance or personal taste: if either is correct, they both are. The verbs that you can’t usually use with either wnes i or short form are indeed the ones like hoffi that intrinsically refer to states that last for some time, rather than point events.
Edit: I’m pretty sure I have actually come across meddyliais i, but it rather carries the implication of “I suddenly thought…”
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Thanks for your help! That’s good because I find dy fod di easier to remember for some reason
Thanks again.
I think I might have seen meddyliais i somewhere too thinking about it…
Note that these are exact equivalents, so either is fine. Some people use more of the “short forms” like deallais i and others prefer to use the equivalent formed with gwneud - wnes i ddeall. Both of those are for a situation where you had a sudden understanding of something - “The teacher explained it and I understood”.
The difference comes when you understood something over time, e.g. “when I was young, I understood how to tie my shoelaces” for example. Then you would use o’n i’n deall - it’s describing your state of understanding over a longer period of time.
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(Apologies in advance if I’m misinterpreting your question…)
The “dy fod ti” etc ones are for when you are using a pronoun (i.e. I, you, he/she/it, we, they - sorry if that comes over as patronising, but just in case someone reading this doesn’t know!) Whether you use all three elements or just “bod ti” is really a matter for personal taste / formality of language. (In SSiW speak: don’t worry about it! But I could expand further if you wanted and it wouldn’t confuse things.)
The “bod” version all on its own is for when you’re naming the person/thing that’s doing it (“Dwi’n gwybod bod Sian yn dod heno”).
No, not patronising at all thanks for your answer, that helps explain things
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