cystal â in this context means “so good as to”, so the Welsh is saying “will you be so good as to phone our help line”.
cystal â can also mean “as good as” - e.g. doedd yr ail ffilm ddim cystal a’r un cyntaf = the second film was not as good as the first one
Diolch!
Can I have some help with this one please?
I’ve seen “fanco” meaning “there” in the phrase “draw fanco” (over there) and I’ve got that.
Now I’m seeing “fanco” on its own when I would have used yna or yno. Is this just an alternative or some nuance I’ve not picked up?
(It was used in the phrase “lawr fanco” - down there)
Thanks
Yes. For the meaning of “there”, yna and acw are synonymous. (And fan’co is nothing more than a colloquial variant of fan acw, literally “the place yonder/there”)
So for “over there” you could say either draw acw, draw yna or draw fan’co (and in the North you could also hear draw fan’na)
Thank you
Why’s it “gormod i’w fwyta” and not just “gormod i fwyta” ?
This is just one of the features of Welsh that are different from English. If the object of a verb appears before the verb in the sentence, you get a so-called “echoed pronoun”.
So you insert ei before bwyta, and i + ei becomes i’w.
Compare: Dw i’n moyn bwyta rhywbeth. (I want to eat something.) – Object placed behind the verb, no echoed pronoun
But: Dw i’n moyn rhywbeth i’w fwyta. (I want something to eat.) – Object placed before the verb, so you get the echoed pronoun.
There is an excellent YouTube video giving more examples on this concept, I’ll see if I can dig that up and edit in the link in a minute.
ETA: Here it is.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJjE6hzXYiQ
Diolch, Hendrik!
I’ve seen the “same car” as "un car"and “un gar” (with soft mutation).
Is the SM unstable or are both acceptable?
‘car’ is a masculine noun so it shouldn’t mutate after un - “the same car” - yr un car
Yes that’s what I thought. I’ll grab a screenshot of what I saw next time it appears. Unless one of the techies can do a quick search for an occurrence of “un gar”
Hmm, is that in the northern or southern course? I wonder how that snuck through 
Southern
Quick question about where the ‘y’ goes in long strings of nouns denoting possession. I know that normally, the ‘y’ goes before the last noun, but what about the case of double possessives (where in English we have two genitives following each other)?
Bad news about the sale of Sue’s Dad’s house
How do you deal with the fact that there are two possessive phrases in this sentence (tŷ y Tad and Tad y Sue)?
Do you simply repeat the ‘y’:
Newyddion drug o werth tŷ y Tad y Sue
or treat the second possessive as a sort of adjective and only have the first ‘y’?
Newyddion drwg o werth tŷ y Tad Sue
Or throw the ‘y’ back to the end:
Newyddion drwg o werth tŷ Tad y Sue
Or is this sort of phrasing just never used and there’s another way of expressing the idea? (I don’t consciously remember ever having seen it…)
Diolch yn fawr!
In your given case, you don’t need any “y” at all. One function of the definite article is providing “specificity”, but proper nouns are by default specific, and any given possessive relation also makes a noun specific. Neither “house” nor “dad” are specific, but “Sue” is, and that makes “Sue’s Dad” also specific.
“Sue’s Dad’s house” is simply tŷ Tad Sue.
(By the same token, “the city’s centre” is canol y dre, but “Cardiff’s center” is “canol Caerdydd”)
Thanks, Hendrik – I’d missed that, and it makes sense now you’ve pointed it out!
Hi David – You’ve already had one clear answer from Hendrik, but I won’t let that stop me from giving you my (probably now unnecessary) answer!
People get ever so confused about the Welsh structure not having enough “the” in it, but it actually works exactly the same as English – it’s simply that the order is reversed.
If I’m talking about a woman who is married to a farmer then – allowing for polygamy – I think there are four possibilities:
In other words, in English, the only “the” that matters is the one that may or may not make the farmer specific: the farmer’s wife = (the) wife of the farmer, whilst a farmer’s wife = (a/the) wife of a farmer.
The Welsh is exactly the same as the English, but in the Welsh word order:
“We’re working on the roof of the house” = “We’re working on the house’s roof” = Dan ni’n gweithio ar do’r tŷ.
“We’re working on the roof of her father’s house” = “We’re working on her father’s house’s roof” = Dan ni’n gweithio ar do tŷ ei thad.
“We’re working on the roof of Sue’s dad’s house” = “We’re working on Sue’s dad’s house’s roof” = Dan ni’n gweithio ar do tŷ tad Sue. 
Thanks, Richard. That’s very helpful.
In particular, the insight that Welsh needs to rephrase the English an X of the Y into one of the X of the Y – that was one of the things that was getting me a little confused.
But your examples also helped me to realise that any specificity seems to ‘infect’ the rest of the phrase so that all the elements become specific and the need for ‘y’ drops away
Diolch!
Well, that was me rephrasing it in English, but I think un o wragedd y ffermwr would work the same! My point was more that the specificity in English and in Welsh works in very much the same way: the extra “the” that English sticks in doesn’t actually seem to add anything to the meaning.
