Hello. Esmé here from Canada. I was on here about 8 months ago but it doesn’t seem to recognize me now through the new course starting a week ago so I signed in again. How do I write something? or is it always to Reply? Is there a tutorial on finding your way around the Forum anywhere? It’s all a bit intimidating for me, though I suppose one day it will be very familiar to me eventually. Diolch.
What is the second panel on my right for while I’m writing this.?
Hey EsmBoone! The forum does take a bit of getting used to, if you get lost you can just click either the “Forum” button up top to go to the main forum page or click on one of the sub-sections underneath the topic title, eg. on this page underneath “Ask your FIRST question…” there’s “Welsh” and “General / Questions” (as well as the “home” icon at the very left). Clicking these will take you back to that forum page.
The section on the right is a preview of how your post will look. If you don’t add any formatting, it’ll look exactly the same as what you’ve typed, but if you add some formatting like this you can see how it’ll show up (and also make sure your formatting is correct).
EDIT: Also, the reply button at the very bottom (next to Bookmark, Share, Flag, etc.) will reply to the topic as a whole. If you want to reply to a specific person, you can click the reply next to their name (that person will also get a notification that someone has replied to their post and make it more likely they’ll see what you’ve written).
If you want to quote someone, you can just highlight the portion of their post you want to quote and click on the “quote reply” button that pops up. eg:
It’s the preview panel!
Wow, awesomely helpful response, Ricardo - diolch yn fawr iawn! 
Hi Esmé - and welcome back! Might you have used a different email address this time? You can always ask the site to send you a password reminder at www.saysomethingin.com/password 
Diolch yn fawr iawn iawn Ricardo both for taking your time to respond and for such helpful words. I’ll play around with what you have suggested. (like the smiley face, now I see how it appears in the right-hand panel.) . Is there a way to save this information somewhere for easy reference? Ah I noticed the bookmark tag so that would probably answer my question there. LOL
Thank you Aran. I’m pretty sure I used this gmail account for everything. It did just let me come back in without having to write anything or create a password etc–I just clicked on the button and presto I was back, so I think it’s OK. I decided to just try everything techy at the outset to get used to the format so I can then get going on the actual language. LOL You’d have laughed at me sitting here yesterday talking to myself out loud yn y Gymraeg. But it was also a very helpful exercise. I’ll do it every day.
S’mae and maybe you will find this helpful: Really useful ‘How to’ stuff and other great posts
I would have been very PROUD of you!
There seems to be a number of ways to saying " Near". ger, agos and yn yml, Can you help? Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Hi Gerald,
The way the tutor in my Welsh evening class taught us to say near. Was ar bwys.
Yes, there are a few ways, but the differences are so subtle I’d suggest you go with whichever one you think of first when it’s needed - they are all correct and you’ll be understood whichever you use. (It’s the same sort of thing as in English - near/close to/nearby/by/etc)
Yes, exactly as Sharon says - don’t worry about precision with this sort of complex thing, it’ll only slow you down - once you can get into enough conversations, and listen to enough spoken Welsh on radio and TV, you’ll develop a feel for which of these to use at any time - and in the meantime, you’ll be understood just fine whichever you use…
Many thanks for your answers to my question, very good advice and i will take it. :smile
What’s the difference between Beth and Be?
No difference, it’s just one of many shortened forms that you’ll come across. (The same happens in english, too, but you probably don’t notice it. The more exposure you get, the more comfortable you’ll get with the variations of spoken language.)
I thought you in Welsh was either chi or ti, so why chdi?
chdi is a spoken variant equivalent to ti - mostly (but there are always exceptions!) heard in North Wales dialects.
Diolch, Siaron.
At some point we are told that for English “and” Welsh speakers say “a” before words starting with a consonant but “ac” before a vowel…
Now I am sure that I keep hearing “ac mae o…” etc., so is the word “mae” the “initial consonant” exception to the rule?
Did I hear, also: ac well i mi
or was it: a gwell i mi…?
…and have any other exceptions been passing me by? (I have an uneasy feeling about a/ac but it keeps me listening hard, I suppose.
Sometimes in cases like that, an intermediate word has been omitted (dont ask me what it is 
). So the other words tend to remain unchanged as if it is assumed that the omitted word is still there.
Yes, with “ac mae”, this is because the full form is “ac y mae”, but the y is commonly dropped, especially in speech.