Su’mae! Hello!
I am a beginning Welsh learner and I am very happy to have found Say Something in Welsh and this forum. I have a question but it’s about a rather complicated topic. So I’m not sure I am posting to the correct thread, but here goes. I am a fluent Irish speaker and when speaking Irish I pay a lot of attention to what my tongue is doing when I pronounce the consonants, because Irish consonants have “broad” and “slender” versions that differ significantly in tongue positioning. When I speak Welsh, I’m not sure what to do with my tongue on the consonants, especially for c,d, g, l, n, and t. Is there a resource anywhere that explains the tongue position for the consonants in simple terms? By the way, I’m an American and English is my first language, so I think my native pronunciation of consonants might be somewhat different even compared to how Welsh people speak English.
Diolch yn fawr! Thanks very much!
G, L and N are the same as in English. C = K (or hard C).
D and T are dental rather than alveoler as in English. I believe Irish is similar as I recognize dental Ds when hearing Irish people speak English.
This video might help:
Wonderful, Diolch.
Diolch! Thank you craigf. This is very helpful. Irish is similar to Welsh in that the broad versions of d, t, are dental. You have a good ear.
Diolch yn fawr Deborah!
Siarades i efo fy ewthyr (83 oed) y bore 'ma a dywedodd o bod yn ei deulu a saying ‘etio befo’ efo’r un ystr â ‘paid â phoeni’. Dywedodd o bod ‘etio’ yn dod o’r air Saesneg ‘heed’ a dod ‘befo’ efallai o ‘heb efo’. Dywedodd roedd saying yn ei deulu o Ynys Môn yn wreithiol sy wedi symud i Derbyshire am waith. Alla i ddim ffeindio’r geiriau wrth Google. Tybed ydy unrhyw un arall wedi clywed y saying hwn?
Yes, it’s sometimes heard in Northern dialects. The usual spelling is hidia/hidiwch befo (fo), and as you say, it’s a borrowing from English to heed, and the meaning is “don’t worry about it”.
O diolch o galon Hendrik! Mae fy nhad i’n cofio hyn hefyd, felly dw i’n siwr mae’n Cymraeg go iawn!
I’ve been pairing SSiW for main learning with some Duolingo to build out vocab, and one of the sentences today caught my eye.
Mae hi’n dysgu Cymraeg yn yr Eidal
I read this as “She is learning Welsh in Italy”, Duolingo represented this as “She is teaching Welsh in Italy”.
Is DL incorrect? And if not, how would you differentiate teaching and learning?
Yes this is correct, but very confusing! You can differentiate by using different words, eg. Astudio for To Study and Addysgu for To Teach, otherwise I think you just have to guess based on context.
If it’s not certain in context, people sometimes ask Dysgu fel athro? to be sure it’s ‘teaching’ you’re talking about 
Very quick question here - can you end a sentence with “efo” ?
Quick answer - no, you shouldn’t, but you will sometimes hear it used in a slangy way like that.
So, how would I formulate a question like “I haven’t got anyone to practice with” ?
You have to add something after the efo e.g. does gen i neb i ymarfer efo fi
As easy as that!
Diolch!
Yes, Welsh usually needs a pronoun to reflect back to what you’re talking about. Another example would be Dyma’r llyfrau o’n ni’n siarad amdanyn nhw - Here are the books we were talking about - Welsh needs to add ‘them’ on the end - … we were talking about them.
Bore da…
I understand that Welsh uses the singular after numbers, but what happens to the (few) adjectives with a plural form in those cases, please:
- y ci arall → y cŵn ereill
- y ddau gi → y ddau gi arall or y ddau gi ereill?
I suspect it’s arall but I thought I’d check to be sure…
Thanks!
Mae’r ddau gi arall yma sounds right to me, so I’d go with arall
The other word is eraill - just a slight spelling issue