That’s exactly where it came from Margaret 
@verity-davey I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone use it, though I dare say some would still do so. hanner can ceiniog or pishyn hanner cant are much more common.
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Aw, that’s a shame. Of course to anyone not aware of pre-decimal currency it is nonsensical, but that’s why I love it.
A single word for 120, six twenties. A number that only makes sense if you know about l.s.d. currency. Just the cultural and historical legacy contained in this one word. 
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The thing I didn’t know was that the whole 12 denarii to a solidus, 20 solidi to a pound thing went all the way back to Charlemagne reforming the Frankish currency. I went down a bit of a Wikipedia rabbit hole on that one - apparently Nigeria was the last country in the world to abandon Carolingian currency (and Cyprus briefly experimented with having 1000 mils to a pound)! Carolingian monetary system - Wikipedia
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Cool! I have also learned something new. Don’t you just love Wiki rabbit holes?
This is why the SSi forum is such a great “place”. It’s full of my kind of nerds!
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Manon Steffan Ros’s ‘Y Stelciwr’
Beryg mai eistedd ar garreg ei drws fyddai hi o hyd heb fy help i!
Could somebody unpack this sentence for me, please?
I think it means something like “It would have been risky to sit on her doorstep for long without my help!” but I don’t understand how mai and fyddai hi are working here.
Thanks!
Beryg followed by a subclause is an idiomatic way to express “Chances are, that…”, so you have to follow this with the appropriate way to introduce the subclause.
Let’s look at a quick re-arrangement:
Beryg y byddai hi’n eistedd ar garreg y drws o hyd heb fy help i. → Chances are that she’d still be sitting on her doorstep without my help.
But if you want to focus the subclause on something that isn’t the verb of the clause, you introduce it with mai (or taw for the Southerners):
Wyt ti’n meddwl mai dyna’r peth gorau i’w wneud? - Do you think that this is the best thing to do?
So focussing the subclause on “eistedd ar garreg ei drws” leads to the usage of mai here.
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That’s great - thanks, Hendrik!
I couldn’t find beryg in the Gweiadur, so I guessed it was an idiomatic shortening of perygl and so ‘risky’…
I knew mai had a role in introducing the subclause (though hazy on the details…), but I couldn’t work out how it fitted with fyddai hi.
Your rearranging and explanation makes it clear now.
Thanks again!
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This answer is a thing of beauty Sir.
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Bore da…
Y Stelciwr (Manon Steffan Ros):
Medrwn i fod yn bwy bynnag yr hoffwn i fod am ychydig.
I think that’s “I could be whoever I wanted to be for a while”, but I’m not sure how it gets there…
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Is the yn in yn bwy bynnag necessary/formal, or would fod pwy bynnag also work?
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What’s the yr doing in hoffwn i for? I think the hoffwn is 1PS conditional, but I don’t understand the yr at this point.
Many thanks for any enlightenment!
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The yn is there because the pwy bynnag etc is acting adverbially (compare to things like medrwn i fod yn gynnar, medrwn i fod yn gyflymach). Dropping the yn wouldn’t sound right technically, but in fast speech it can easily get swallowed up, and the mutation would usually remain, so you may well hear fod bwy bynnag…
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the yr here = “that” : “I could be whoever that I wanted to be”. Remember, in English it’s common to leave out the that, but in Welsh it needs it. And it’s an yr because hoffi isn’t a form of bod and the h acts like a vowel .
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Thanks very much, Siaron – that makes it much clearer!
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