I’m think Mor ddu â’r frân (as black as THE raven) is the whole idiom in Welsh, and that it’s been mistranslated as "as black as A raven.
A quick question about mutations please: Do mutations work across quotation boundaries?
E.g.
- Mae’r gair ‘panad’ yn dod o ‘cwpanaid’, or '…o ‘gwpanaid’
Diolch!
I don’t know the definite answer to that, but my instinct would be to go for ‘cwpanaid’ as you’re isolating the word, not giving it as part of the sentence.
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That’s great – thanks @Deborah-SSi.
I thought it might be how it’s approached, because it does feel logical – but then, when have languages ever been logical?
Thanks again!
An easy one - can you say “sy’n trio” or does it always have to be sydd yn trio?
yes, *sy’n trio" is fine, it doesn’t have to be the full sydd yn trio 
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The concept of time is feminine. Cloch is feminine.
Faint o’r gloch yw hi? Mae hi’n dri o’r gloch.
But tri is the masculine form.
Why?
It’s nothing to do with gender. The “tri” has mutated to “dri” because it’s following the “yn”. Here it’s been shortened to 'n because it’s following a vowel.
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I think the question was, “why not dair?”
I forbore to comment, because I don’t actually know the answer - but in the absence of a more informed response, here’s my two-penn’orth: if we’re just counting, and not counting something specific (such as hours or bells or livestock) that could be masculine or feminine, we default to the masculine form. I think it’s effectively saying, “It’s ‘three’ of the bell/clock,” rather than “It’s three bells/clocks.” I think it’s probably a sort of quotational use of the cardinal number, if that makes any sense. (It might not!)
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Thanks @margarethall and @RichardBuck, yes it was “why not dair?” that was my question, not the soft mutation itself. Thinking further, it does make sense to have this clear distinction of tri o’r gloch rather than tair o glychau / tair cloch. Because of course “three bells” is a totally different time from “three o’clock”!
I don’t think it’s relevant that we have “three bells” vs “three o’clock” in English as two different times, because we’re not talking about the distinction between clock time and ship’s time.
The Welsh cloch and English clock both come from Proto-Celtic klokkos (“bell”), so the phrases “o’r gloch” and “o’clock”, (which is an abbreviation of ‘of the clock’) are the same.
The difference is that Welsh kept cloch to mean ‘bell’, and over time that has become a synonym for clock. But we now use “bell” for bell, which is Old English of Germanic origin, and “clock” for clock.
So when are saying “Mae hi’n dri o’r gloch”, it’s exactly the same as saying “It’s three o’clock”. There’s no reference to ships bells there at all.
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Yes, I was thinking of the history and the etymology - ‘clocks’ were invented to ring bells before they added the hour hand - rather than trying to add a nautical twist. GPC says it was originally ar (y) gloch in Welsh, and that o’r gloch is due to English influence.
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Would/n’t
Should/n’t
Could/n’t
Oh my word! 
Diolch
Ah! I misunderstood the question. Sorry.
I think sometimes you can get confused by wondering why things are said the way they are rather than just accepting that that’s how it’s said. But the explanations others have provided make things clear.
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Hi,
How do you deal with phrases which in English end in a preposition (which despite the pedants, has been perfectly good English grammar for hundreds of years… 
)
“She forgot who she was writing to.”
Naeth hi anghofio pwy roedd hi’n sgwennu i doesn’t sound right, but I couldn’t explain why, or what the real answer shoud be… (i bwy roedd hi’n sgwennu. perhaps?)
Almost - you’ve got the word order right there, but the wrong preposition. “to write to” = ysgrifennu (sgwennu) at
Nath hi anghofio at bwy roedd hi’n 'sgwennu
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Thanks @siaronjames!
Do people say …roedd hi’n sgwennu at though, even if it’s not quite correct?
Thanks again!
Sorry, what’s this in reference to?
Edit: Ah, I found your question on the Word of the Day thread. Looks like those tables helped you, but I’m not responsible for them. 
There are cases when you would end with a preposition but only because it’s actually part of the pronoun which in speech gets dropped.
eg. “she forgot she was writing to him” = nath hi anghofio roedd hi’n (ei) sgwennu ato (fo)
It’s otherwise a bit odd-sounding to have the preposition at the end, although certain examples, although technically ‘wrong’, have come into use because of the English pattern, e.g. “Where do you come from” should be O le wyt ti’n dod, but you will certainly hear “lle wyt ti’n dod o”.
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@siaronjames That’s great, thanks! It’s really helpful to learn about these nuances – the books don’t always tell you what ‘is’ said, rather than what ‘should’ be said…
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