A disappointing weekend for both Cymru a Lloegr!
When I first started learning I used i as for everywhere, but of course it’s more nuanced than that, and now sometimes I go too far the other way and think i can’t be used when it can.
Thanks!
I realise that this question could have different answers in English, never mind in Welsh, but…
Assume[*] that the English for the sequence of meals is:
Breakfast > Dinner > Tea > Supper
what’s the Welsh equivalent, please?
Brecwast > X > Y > Swper…
The Gweiadur has cinio = lunch, dinner, which really doesn’t help very much… Is te for food as well?
Thanks!
[*] Because Dinner is in the middle of the day and Tea is at teatime. Obviously. Don’t let this newfangled southern ‘lunch’ nonsense fool you.
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I believe the correct order in English is:
Breakfast > Second Breakfast > Elevenses > Lunch > High Tea > Tea > Dinner > Supper > Nightcap > Midnight Snack.
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You missed out nibbles…
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Hobyd, wyt ti? 
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Paid ag anghofio “llenwi’r corneli,” felly.
Don’t forget “filling in the corners”, then.
On the issue of the poshness of lunch, I remember a teacher of Latin and Greek explaining two different Classical metres (I think one’s hexameter and the other pentameter) with the example, “Down in a deep, dark ditch | sat an old cow munching a beanstalk. / Out from her mouth came forth | yesterday’s dinner and tea.”
Apart from all the business about chewing the cud, I was always struck by the fact that lunch didn’t get a look in, despite Classics being thought of as irredeemably posh.
But I’m afraid I don’t know a proper answer to the original question about Welsh meal-naming…
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To me, it’s as confusing in Welsh as it is in English. I think of “dinner” as the main meal of the day, so it can be in the middle of the day or in the evening. If I eat it in the middle of the day, then the evening meal becomes “supper”, though my mother from Lancashire always called it “tea”. If I eat dinner in the evening, then the midday meal becomes “lunch” and when I was at school in New Zealand and working in Australia “lunchtime” was what we had in the middle of the day. It really confuses me when people refer to “dinner time”, as I have no idea when that is!
In Welsh, it seems a bit easier. “Amser cinio” is always (as far as I know) in the middle of the day, so I stick with brecwast - cinio - swper 
… but it seems a bit weird if cinio is just a sandwich and swper is the main meal!
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For me, it’s generally breakfast-dinner-tea in English (even though ‘tea’ is usually my main meal) and brecwast-cinio-swper in Welsh.
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For me, and from a decidedly not posh background, if the meal in the middle of the day is cold or hot but small, it’s lunch, and the evening meal is dinner. If it’s a proper dinner, ie the main meal of the day, then the evening meal becomes tea. Supper is always a small late evening meal, after dinner (or tea).
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When I’m working, I finish at 6pm and don’t get in until 6:30, so eat my main meal around then to 7pm. I always call that meal “tea” even if it’s the most substantial meal I eat all day. Lunch, to me, is what you eat in the middle of the day.
Dinner is actually really hard to explain… I guess I’d use it in multiple different ways.
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Diolch!
I suspected it would be just as confusing in Welsh. I actually use both ‘lunch’ and ‘dinner’ for midday, and ‘dinner’ and ‘tea’ for the evening meal, but I don’t think about it – I say whatever comes to mind first and then make it more precise afterwards if it turns out to be ambiguous.
I shall try to remember cinio – swper then, but it’s going to be very difficult: for me supper will always be something you eat before bedtime, after more substantial meals (as @suw so rightly says…. 
)
In fact, even the Gweiadur agrees on swper:
pryd olaf y dydd sy’n cael ei fwyta yn yr hwyr
though they hedge their bets on cinio;
prif bryd bwyd y dydd, sy’n cael ei fwyta naill ai ganol dydd (amser cinio) neu gyda’r hwyr. lunch, dinner.
And te:
pryd bach ysgafn sy’n cael ei fwyta yn y prynhawn. tea
That’s why I thought I ask what people usually say in practice…
Thanks for all the replies!
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Maybe we all ought to use ‘midday meal’ and ‘evening meal’ to remove ambiguity? Would that be ‘pryd canol dydd’ and ‘pryd nos’?
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As a slight change of subject, I’ve just hit “Do’n i ddim isio” for “I didn’t want”. Is “Doni’m isio” a contraction of that phrase, and is it common?
Diolch!
Yes, that is a contraction, and yes, it’s common (in the north).
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O’n i’n meddwl bo hi’n gogleddol!
Thanks much!
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Hi…
Quick question about the nuances of positioning the ‘y’ in possessive phrases, os gwelwch yn dda.
I understand that in simple phrases, the ‘y’ separates the two noun phrases:
- canol y dref
- ail ddirwnod y gwiliau
But does that always apply, or can it vary with the meaning, rhythm and/or emphasis of the sentence?
E.g. Must it be Dw i’n poeni am sefyllfa ofnadwy y rygbi Cymraeg, even though the main focus of the thought is on the awful state?
Would Dw i’n poeni am y sefyllfa ofnawdwy rygbi Cymraeg be wrong, or an acceptable variation for style/meaning purposes?
Thanks!
There are two different constructions here, and I’m afraid you can’t mix’n’match - although many learners will get them a bit mixed up, and you’ll be understood either way.
If you’ve got two nouns put together such that one of them describes the other one - a rally car, a bedroom (a kind of car, a kind of room) - Welsh treats the whole thing as a normal noun phrase and the y(r) goes first, as normal: stafell + gwely = y stafell wely.
If one of them belongs to the other, it works like the English 's ending - rather than thinking of mab y brenin as “the son of the king”, and then trying to remember which of the English “the” gets missed out in Welsh, I would think of it as “the king’s son” - only one ‘the’, goes with ‘king", job done.
In your examples, the town centre is really the town’s centre; similarly, the holidays’ second day, and Welsh rugby’s dreadful situation. You’ve got the article in the right place, and moving it would be understood, but wrong.
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Thanks, Richard. That’s very clear.
I was fairly sure that the y in the middle would always be right, but sometimes rules are emphasised for beginners for ease of learning, and it turns out later on that there’s some flexibility for reasons of style / nuances of meaning, once you know what you’re doing. I wondered if this were one of those occasions.
Thanks again!
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Good point - “We’ll encourage you to say it the normal way” vs “This is the only possible way.”
I originally included “the church tower” as an example because it’s one I use when I’m trying to tell adult English learners the difference between nouns and adjectives - the church tower, the tall tower, this tower is tall, but not *this tower is church. I got rid of it, because it didn’t help - but then I realised that it could actually be useful.
- a prince is a king’s son, the son of a king
- the prince is the king’s son, the son of the king
- the church tower is the tower of the church
- but the rally car is not *the car of the rally
So the Welsh actually corresponds very closely to the English: Mab brenin ydy tywysog; mab y brenin; tŵr yr eglwys; y car rali.
Of course, there are cases which aren’t so clear - and in those instances you’ll see native speakers hesitate or ask for help; but the basic principle is there.
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A good way of putting it!
In the back of my mind (vaguely – you’ve made me think about it more…) was the possibility of swapping the possessive with an extended noun phrase as adjective as we sometimes do in English for emphasis or stylistic effect.
- those are old man red shoes = those are the red shoes of an old man
- There’s horrible situation and there’s Welsh Rugby horrible situation… = …the horrible situation of …
We do that for stylist effect – it’s unusual but not grammatically wrong and I wondered if Welsh had similar stylistic licence in this sort of situation (the general principle, not necessarily explicitly for this phrase, of course).