Hi there,
I’ve been studying Cymraeg for about ten days now and I’m reading a copy of Hugan Fach Goch. My questions is, how does Hugan translate to Ridinghood? When I look it up I see that it translates to a gannet (the bird). Thanks for your time and sorry if this question isn’t posted in the best location.
I don’t know what the answer to your question is, sorry, but welcome to the forum, and don’t worry about where to ask things on this forum. Just ask away! And I’m impressed that you’re already reading after just ten days. Dal ati! (Keep at it!)
It looks like it’s an idiom, or a cultural thing.
Google translate turns Hugan Fach Goch into Redriding Hood (interestingly not Little Red Riding Hood), but if you change the colour to Melyn (Yellow) then Gannet appears.
This doesn’t mean that GT is the best translation tool about! Just that translation is often very idiomatic!
In my dictionary, hugan translates as cloak, covering hence hood. Could it be incorrect in Google Translate?
I tried the Trinity St David’s Geiriadur, easiest for me to check from my laptop, and got:
1. cloak n.f. (huganau) covering n.f. (huganau) rug n.f. (huganau) gannet n.
So both are right! I haven’t looked up ‘hood’ because it’s much easier on my ipad (words I never expected to type!) and it’s out of reach, charging.
Croeso @dylanmcconnell This Forum,as Margaret said, is very friendly and helpful and not entirely full of lazy old dragons like me! (In mitigation, I don’t want to disturb my toy poodle, Toffi!) You are doing incredibly well after 10 days!!
p.s. I see you are the kind person from Massachusetts who just signed the petition, Diolch yn Fawr!!!
I agree, hugan is cloak (and also rug?). I looked this up a few years ago after buying the book to read with Lowri. Clogyn is the word I use for cloak just because both of my coffee table dictionaries have that. And also the same reason why I use cwfl for hood even though there are other words available.
Holy crap! You folks are alright. Thank you very much for the prompt responses. What an amazing forum. I’m using Duolingo as well and I just read Some Sex and a Hill, absolutely loved it, my kind of hijinx and chicanery. I’m absolutely loving Cymraeg. I studied Spanish in high school, what… 20 years ago now, I’ve studied some German and a good amount of French. Cymraeg is by far my favorite, but I read a lot and my name is Dylan so I’m probably a bit biased. I’m struggling through the pronouns and adverbs now, but they’re coming. I was actually becoming very concerned that my reading was exceeding my ear for the language so I was extremely pleased to find The Big Welsh Challenge and, of course, Saysomethinginwelsh. I was a bit irked when I found that Netflix only carries the English language Hinterlands over here, If I can find the cymraeg versions I’ll just buy them. All these free sources for learning are a refreshing encouragement for this America weary humanist (it was a rough year over here and this one promises to be worse.). I can only hope to progress far enough to be as helpful to others as you have been to me. Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Lwc dda gyda Trump!
fy ymddiheuriadau i weddill y byd.
hug is hood, hugan is a diminutive - little hood.
Glad you enjoyed it, and a warm welcome to the forum… 
There is loads of stuff on Youtube as well, and also a fair amount on Soundcloud (maybe not as easy to find). And when you feel ready for it, Radio Cymru is available via the BBC website, and there is also an international page for the S4C “Clic” service (but only a smallish subset of programmes are available so far).