Thank you, Aran.
Yes, I’m aware that I need to revisit the lesson on mutations but I’m afraid it is well down the priority list as the vocabulary units at the end of course 2 have been so much fun!
Raymond
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I wouldn’t worry about picking them out - if you revisit the last couple of lessons of each course from time to time, you’ll cover plenty of them…
Please tell me it’s still “Ydy” at the start of a sentence in the South though. Otherwise I’ve battled with that toungue twister for trips up North only - “Dydy hynna ddim yn meddwl nad ydan ni ddim…” / “That doesn’t mean that we don’t…” (I think). 
That one’s definitely above my pay grade John. I’m sure someone will be along in a minute who knows.
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At the start of a sentence we’d have “mae“, though, wouldn’t we? I know for certain that in negative sentences “dyw“ is used rather than “dydy“. And in questions you’d likely hear “yw“, for example “Beth yw’ch enw chi?“
(Standard disclaimer that this is all from what I have learned, with no hands-on experience so far)
I’ve learnt ydy, and yw and I’ve always thought that they are completely interchangeable (I’ve learnt in West Wales and now I’m doing South). I’ll be interested to hear what others think!
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Ah, yes
My mother likes: Mae fy mam i’n hoffi
My mother doesn’t like: Dwy fy mam I ddim’n hoffi
Does my mother like? : Yw/Ydy fy mam i’n hoffi?
I’m not sure where that leaves us with the above mentioned tongue twister though. I eagerly await Iestyns versions of Level 3 Challenges 3 & 4
i learned, back in the mists of time, ydw i, ydy hi/fe, ydyn ni, ydych chi, ydyn nhw. i presume yw is a coloquial short form, but i am no expert!
Were you doing that in the southern course? I’d have expected that to be ‘dyw hynna ddim yn meddwl’… but you’ll be understood fine with either variation…
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Ah that’s great thanks, Aran. Yes, I started with Southern, but am now widening out slightly with the Northern material. I must say that I am really enjoying the whole SSiW system.
I am also so pleased that my ears are starting to pick up even slight regional variations as I travel across and also up and down the country. These variations seem to be mirrored in Welsh English also, which is quite reassuring.
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OK, just a quick update if permitted -
I heard Shan Cothi (who I believe is from Carmarthenshire) on Radio Cymru this morning coming out with “na dydy/nad ydy” and also “fedrai”. The words seemed to flow too naturally to be radio language. That’s good enough for me. If I get any funny looks, I think I’ll just say I’m speaking Briganteg.
On a genuine note, although I live in S Wales, I find the shorter N Wales “o” and “e” to be quite easy on my Geordie tongue (scon/scone and all that).
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I’m rather overdue another update (or two). A couple of weeks back, the buses conspired against me massively, such that it took the best part of an hour to get into work each morning. Coupled with two days of massive IT problems at work, I have two more book reviews for you - “Coed y Brenin” and “Cwm Gwrachod” by Colin Jones.
When I confessed on Bwtcamp that I hadn’t yet started reading, several Bwtcampers were very keen to recommend the Blodwen Jones series to me. I duly purchased them, but rapidly came to the conclusion that they were a little too much too soon (especially without recourse to a dictionary), so jumped at the opportunity to bury myself in “E-Ffrindiau” instead. These two books were an attempt to put Blodwen off for another couple of weeks (failed there, thanks to the above), and to stick on the ‘nursery’ slopes of Welsh reading…
So… “Coed y Brenin” and “Cwm Gwrachod” are two short stories for learners. They are available both as e-books and in print. The vocabulary used is much more wide-ranging than “E-Ffrindiau”, and the combined efforts of the Oxford Welsh Dictionary, Geiriadur Bangor and Google Translate were needed at times to get to the bottom of what was being said. The stories start in the present (or in the case of “Coed y Brenin”, the present plus “mynd i” and “wedi”, and progressively add tenses and complexity as the stories develop.
For northern learners, be warned that “dw i’n” sometimes becomes “w i’n” and “gyda” sometimes becomes “‘da". There is quite a lot of repetition of vocabulary, so once you’ve looked something up, it is likely to crop up again later in the story. However, there were occasions when a word was only glossed on the second encounter, which was a little frustrating as I’d already looked it up by that point!
I found “Cwm Gwrachod” a much easier read. I don’t know if this was because I’d already absorbed a lot of the vocab from “Coed y Brenin”. “Coed y Brenin” felt like a bit of an uphill slog at points - where I was having to look up several words in every sentence.
I happened to pick up Blodwen Jones again when I was half way through battle with “Coed y Brenin”, and could read pretty much all of the first page without needing the dictionary. What a difference a month makes!
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In addition, another story about the ‘perils’ of learning Welsh… Last week I was on a climbing course in North Wales*. Since I was last there, the place I was staying at have put a log-on on their wifi.
I switched the default language of my computer to Welsh about a month before Bwtcamp. It doesn’t usually make much of a difference - the date on the desktop, the dates emails were sent/received, my Skype log, Wunderground weather forecasts, and some government webpages.
Until last weekend. I was faced with a registration screen in Welsh. No option to switch back to English. Most of it I understood, but the first question had me stumped for the best part of 10 minutes. “Eich Rhyw”, with a drop-down menu of two options… The dictionary didn’t want to help with deciphering the two drop-down options either.
In spite of (i) a conversation on Bwtcamp about the perils of “rhyw” and “rhiw” and (ii) having re-read Aran’s book recently, it took me far longer than it really should have to figure out that it was asking me whether I was male or female, and that it really was that meaning of “rhyw”…
*For those of you in that general area, I would have loved to meet up but I was there with a non-Welsh speaking friend. I’ll be back on my own in July. Consider yourself warned!
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Sorry, John, I’m going to disappoint you massively. At best, your tongue twister will be reduced to the rather easier “Dyw hynny ddim yn meddwl nag ŷn ni’n …” (Is that what you heard from Sian Cothi?). In fact, in “proper” southern, like wot I speak, you’ll hear “So hynny’n meddwl nag ŷn ni’n…”.
But you can still console yourself with “Your father’s black teddy isn’t tidy like your black teddy”.
These are brilliant, Jane! I’ve been meaning to ask on the forum for ages about what people think about different books “for learners”, because there’s quite a lot out there, but the quality is a bit patchy, people’s preferences are different, and people who are learning my different methods have different needs - you touch on that with your reference to Mynediad vocabulary.
So congratulations on your progress, and thank you for sharing your personal successes with us like this.
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Dydy tedi du dy dad di ddim yn deidi fel dy dedi du?
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Or is it …dy dedi du di?
I really didn’t know where to put my pronouns and adjectives, so I dodged the issue. If you find out, ddydi di wrtha i os ydy ‘dy dedi di du’ neu ‘dy dedi du di’?
Mae “dy dedi du” yn deidi, mae “dy dedi du di” yn deidi hefyd. Da, 'de?
Translation: It can be either…
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I was just trying to squeeze in an (extra) couple of “dee” sounds.
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