Welsh phrasing for Jim's book

As some of you know, my husband Jim is a writer. As the book he is currently writing is set in Wales at about this time frame (i.e. neither historic nor future), there are occasional uses of Welsh in the book. He generally checks with me to make sure what he’s using makes sense, etc. At the moment, he needs a sentence that I think he’s gotten pretty well from Google Translate, but he would like it to be a bit more idiomatic. The character speaking is presumed to be 1st language Welsh, but working on an English-language radio station. They lose the feed for a news story, and the character says something like “I don’t know what’s happened” in Welsh - more to himself than anything - before switching to English to apologize to the listeners. SO

The translation from Google: Nid wyf yn gwybod beth sydd wedi digwydd. Seems pretty formal to me (as much of Google T is). So to make it more idiomatic, I suggested contracting the “wyf yn” to “wy’n” (Would that be right?) I’m also thinking there should be one or more contractions around “beth sydd wedi” but I’m not quite sure how it should go. Something “be’di” or is that taking too much out?

Thanks for any help you can give. Completely re-writing the sentence is definitely an option.

Where is the character from?

I’m not sure it matters what his dialect is, as long as it is relatively understandable to most. The character listening to the radio is driving east out of Brecon, but the Welsh announcer could be from anywhere, especially as he is speaking mostly to himself.

OK. If it’s just a random voice on the radio, you could go with

Sai’n gwbod be’ sy’ 'di digwydd

for a southern voice, or

Dwi’m yn gwbo be’ sy’ 'di digwydd

for a Northern voice.

Others may be able to offer tweaks. Possibly including a Valleys-orientated usage of smo :smiley:

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Gen i’m syniad be sy 'di digwydd.

Be’ goblyn sy’n digwydd?

:sunny:

A Breconi-ite (if that’s a word) would probably go with Rob’s first offering, though it might be more understandable to more people (especially "look-upable in a dictionary) as “Dwi’m yn gwybod be’…”

Thank you all very much! :sunny: If anyone has other ideas, just add them here; we’ve got time before the final edits.