Yes, exactly, it’s a stylistic choice.
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And in case it wasn’t already clear, it’s unrelated to the os bit of the sentence - you can choose to say dw i heb instead of Dw i ddim wedi if you want to.
But the bit I’m wondering about is the os fyswn where I’d want just taswn or 'swn or possibly petaswn or something.
Is this me as a learner being prescriptive and judgy, or is os there a bit of an Anglicism? And, if so, is it more likely a learner’s mistake, or a native speaker not doing what grammarians tell them they “ought”?
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I was thinking that os resulted in byswn i rather than doeddwn i wedi ddim?
Good to know that heb can slot in for ddim wedi, though. Nice to have choices!
I have just been introduced to, fel tasai hi ddoe. Listening to the lady it sounds much more like hi’n ddoe. I would be grateful is someone could confirm the former, I have to work very hard to commit something to memory, but, once it’s there!
Diolch
Yes, doeddwn i ddim wedi would be “I hadn’t” in terms of time - further back in the past, rather than more hypothetical. Doeddwn i ddim wedi ei weld ers sbel, ond… “I hadn’t seen him for a while, but…” as opposed to Taswn i ond wedi ei weld… “Had I but seen him/If only I had seen him…”
@victoria-36 yes, it should definitely be fel tasai hi ddoe - with ‘standalone’ expressions of time like ddoe you don’t need the yn before it, but because it’s common to have it if you’re going to continue with a verb, e.g. fel tasai hi’n gwybod (as if she knew), sometimes in casual speech the yn sneaks in when it shouldn’t 
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Four months later and I’ve just finished Level 1. Experience has absolutely borne out your comments. It’s only in the past couple of weeks that I’ve paid any attention to the written language and I’m sure my pronunciation is the better for it. Seeing some words that I’ve been using confidently for several months has been a revelation, rather like meeting a friend you’ve only ever met online (‘Oh, that’s what you look like!’). It also means that I’m more likely to correctly guess the pronunciation of a word I haven’t seen before. Thanks again for your advice.
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I’m so glad that has helped you. I watched delighted recognition dawn on the face of an SSi learner in the very early days when he first picked up a book for children and realised he could match some of the written words to those he’d been saying with SSi. It was quite magical to see!
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I’m listening to some carols lately and noticing some versions of Stille Nacht are Tawel Nos, others say Dawel Nos (or even Nôs), and Ganol Gaeaf Noethlwm also has a soft mutation right at the beginning.
Why?
I feel almost sure I should know already, but it isn’t coming to me.
I’m quite prepared to be wrong, but usually adjectives come after nouns, but when it comes to translating, interpreting poetry, lyrics, all rules are thrown out of the window!
However in standard Welsh, Silent night would be nôs dawel, or noson dawel. Once it’s been mucked around with in translation I can see why the first word mutates.
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Well, moving the adjective tends to emphasize it, so that part makes sense to me. Tawel can just mean quiet, whereas placing it before the noun makes clear it’s silent here. A more profound quiet.
It’s whether the mutation “should” be there or not when it comes before the noun that I don’t understand.
I wonder if it might be a vocative, like “O Holy Night”?
In Latin, the vocative is the case for addressing someone, and is optionally often prefaced with the particle ‘O’ (as in O Holy Night or O Canada).
In Gaelic the equivalent is ‘A’ and it’s always followed by lenition (the Gaelic equivalent of a soft mutation) - so Seumas turns into A Sheumais (pronounced Hamish).
I know mediaeval Welsh didn’t use ‘a’*, but I think it did do a treiglad meddal for addressing people; with names it went out of fashion (so Geraint no longer changes to Eraint at random intervals), but I believe literary Welsh keeps it with common nouns. Could that be a possibility? (I don’t think it works for Ganol Gaeaf Noethlwm though…)
*Actually, it looks like it did.
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Well, not quite the answer I was looking for yet, (it works for Dawel Nos, not so much for Ganol Gaeaf Noethlwm) but I knew I’d learn something!
Thanks guys. 
Would that vocative case soft mutation be why people write “Shwmae bawb!” instead of “Shwmae pawb!” as I’ve noticed a few times?
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I say “helo bawb” when addressing people because I’d read that a soft mutation is used for the vocative, but it could well be that I’m getting it wrong/being ridiculously archaic!
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No, I think it’s only particularly archaic if you were to do it with a name. I saw reference to teachers addressing a class of children as blant, and Helo, bawb seems much the same. I found the following from a web search for ‘vocative Welsh’:
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Ganol Gaeaf might well just be adverbial (In the bleak midwinter), like
Wela i chdi ddydd Gwener for “I’ll see you on Friday.”
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Of course! That is what was nagging at me.
Diolch yn fawr!
Nadolig llawen, bawb.
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Is anyone else having problems? Automagic keeps stopping, I tried the app only to have it speed through several new things very quickly then stop completely.
I’ll try again tomorrow, it might be my local problem.
Diolch