Generally when an adjective that usually precedes the noun comes after it, it’s either for emphasis, or because the meaning changes.
hen coming after the noun usually means “ancient” rather than just “old”.
The Welsh for “antiques” is hen bethau, so hen bethau hen here probably means ancient antiques
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Oh, I wasn’t aware of that! (I mean, I was aware of the possibility - plentyn unig, unig blentyn etc. - but not with hen.) I only knew of Llywarch Hen or Coel Hen - Llywarch the Old, or Old King Cole.
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I have enjoyed reading some comments on SSIW Facebook, I am so delighted to be able to understand some if not all. Another person commented that the translation is sometimes incorrect, is there a recommended, reliable internet translation site or app that I could visit?
Diolch
I’m afraid not. While Google translate may not be completely bad, its reliability suffers greatly if the text contains typos or colloquialisms. You can give it a try, but your mileage may vary, just as with Facebook’s built-in translator, which suffers from the same shortcomings.
Hi all
So I had a break for most of December from my learning and now I’ve come back in January and there’s lots of things I don’t even remember learning first time around. I find I’m struggling more as I’m trying to remember new things being taught but then have lost knowledge of the rest of the sentences they are put in.
I’m using automagic app and wondering if it’s best to rewind a few times to go back or if I should push through and hope it all clicks?
Thank you 
Google Translate is better than Facebook’s built-in translation. Sometimes I hit the translation button on a Facebook post just so I can laugh at it, and then I rate the translation as awful (or sometimes just bad, to be fair) so that maybe someday it will improve.
But mostly if I don’t understand a sentence I will use Gweiadur for the words I don’t know, sometimes with a bit of guesswork as to spelling variations and colloquialisms, and if the grammar or structure of the sentence is still confusing me I might try Google Translate. It can help to edit a very colloquial or misspelled comment to use more standard spellings or words, if I can, before trying Google.
What Google produces is not necessarily going to be correct, but often it’s within the neighbourhood and I can work things out from there, so it’s not useless. Just don’t rely on Google alone!
If after all that I still haven’t got the gist, I have to give up or ask a human. But more and more often now Gweiadur and engaging my deductive reasoning is sufficient.
@nicola-rowlands what you could do is swap over to using the latest SaySomethingin app and see how you go with that. It picks up your progress from the AutoMagic prototype, but it gives you extra practice of anything that you may have missed in AutoMagic.
Look for SaySomethingin in the app store, or go to app.saysomethingin.com for the web browser version.
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Apololgies if this has been asked before – it’s not an easy concept to search for…
What’s the equivalent of the English ‘at’ in phrases like rubbish at rugby, bad at singing, great at cards etc, please? (i.e. where the second part can be a noun or a present participle.)
Thanks!
Generally am, I think - rybish am is a bit of an Anglicism; if you’re good at something you can be un da am + verb-noun.
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Geiriadur yr Academi has “he’s bad at lying , un gwael yw am ddweud celwydd”
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That’s interesting, thanks.
I wonder if the un gwael / da / sothach etc is a key part of the phrase, so mae o’n wael am ddweud celwydd would sound less Welsh and more a literal translation from English?
I think so, although more informed input (or finally getting my head round searching the corpus) might help! However, specifically with the loan-word rybish, I’m getting search results without un - ro’n i’n rybish am sgwennu yn 'rysgol (“I was rubbish at writing in school” - which is, I think, from Llyfr Glas Nebo, so ‘street Welsh’, so to speak, but written by a professional author who’s a native speaker) and dwi’n rybish am siarad amdano (I’m rubbish at talking about it). It could well be that you’re more likely to get an English-style structure with an English loan-word.
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Interesting – thank you!
I make some notes as I go along, to help me.
I have ddudest ti, you said also, ddudoch chi, did you say.
I repeatedly get these wrong, are my notes incorrect?
Diolch
They’re both ‘you said’ - one informal/singular, the other formal/plural.
Both can be used in questions, too, in the right context.
Thank you, i don’t know what the situation is, so it’s just learning both. Now I know😁
Hi,
Just writing my diary about last night’s ffiasgo yn Ffrainc…
Dydy pethau ddim yn edrych yn obeithiol i Gymru…
How do you say ‘for’ in such a context – is i ok, or would you use ar gyfer here? Or some other expression?
Diolch (a chydymdeimlad…)
Amdani is about it, but sometimes it amdani fo.
Any tips?
am, like lots of other prepositions in Welsh, conjugates according to the pronoun.
amdana fi
amdanat ti
amdani hi
amdano fe/fo
amdanoch chi
amdanom ni
amdanyn nhw