Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Welsh General / Questions
#546

Those are all absolutely fine, so apparently the knots are imaginary…:wink:

Wel y 'ffernol lwcus…:wink: You can probably cover pretty much all the bases with ‘da iawn, bois’ and ‘Iesu Grist bach!’ (although best to avoid the latter if you’re sitting near a bunch of debenture seats owned by members of a chapel)…

The ‘I think it must be [this] to have [this]’ gets a bit clumsy in Welsh, so you’d probably go for something like ‘Rhaid bod hi’n wych cael teulu sy’n siarad Cymraeg, yn fy marn i’ - yes, you can often use ‘cael’ in that kind of context… :sunny:

Where people often stumble is using it as ‘dwi’n cael’ - which doesn’t mean ‘I have’, but more something like ‘I get to’.

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#547

[quote=“owainlurch, post:545, topic:3153”]
“byddai’n neis tasai (beth bynnag) gyda fi”
[/quote] This sounds good anyway!

Being a bit more long-winded, I was just looking up “have” in http://geiriaduracademi.org/ to see if you could ever use “cael”.

I think “Byddai’n wych cael teulu sy’n siarad Cymraeg” sounds slightly suspicious - I think it may sound a bit like you’re getting one from somewhere! Maybe someone could confirm?

How about “Byddai’n wych bod â teulu sy’n siarad Cymraeg”?

Meddu is marked as “Occ” in the http://geiriaduracademi.org/ so I think should be treated with suspicion.

I copied some examples of use of “cael” for “have” when I was looking through - they seem to tend more towards the “get” meaning:

we don’t ~ many visitors, ni fyddwn yn cael llawer o ymwelwyr

she is having a baby in the spring, mae hi’n cael babi yn y gwanwyn;

it is to be had (at the chemist’s), mae ar gael, gellir ei gael (gan y fferyllydd)

I must ~ them (by tomorrow), [mae’n] rhaid imi eu cael, rhaid imi wrthynt (erbyn yfory);

.to ~ tea with s.o., cael/cymryd te gyda rhn

he is having his dinner, mae’n ciniawa; mae’n cael ei ginio;

to ~ a good time, cael hwyl, eich mwynh|au’ch hun

to ~ the measles, cael y frech goch, bod dan y frech goch, bod aâ’r frech goch arnoch;

to ~ a dream, breuddwydio, cael breuddwyd

to ~ a lesson, cael gwers
to ~ a bath/shower, cael bath/cawod;

to ~ a talk, cael sgwrs, sgwrsio, cael ymgom, ymgomio;

he had no successor, ni chafodd olynydd

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#548

Well if those are correct, how about this one? (This is very timely!)

“Is it you who I need to contact about changing a sentence on the department website?”

It’s a bit of a nasty complicated sentence, but could it be:

“Ai chi sydd yr un mae eisiau i fi cysylltu arni er mwyn newid brawddeg ar yr wefan yr adran?”
or
“Ai chi yw yr un mae eisiau i fi cysylltu arni er mwyn newid brawddeg ar yr wefan yr adran?”
or
“Ai chi sydd eisiau i fi cysylltu arni er mwyn newid brawddeg ar yr wefan yr adran?”

I rarely get the chance to write an email in Welsh at work, but I would quite like to start one like this if I could work out what it was meant to be! (After some confusion a while ago about who is officially allowed to do translation for the website.)

(I’ll give this post a couple of hours before resorting to writing something simple instead!)

(Whoops, not sure if this counts as work…or extended lunch…) :wink:

#549

Thank you! It wouldn’t sound, though, as if I were planning to get someone to be my Welsh-speaking family, I hope?:slight_smile: (not that I wouldn’t like that, but there’s no need to make people all suspicious).

#550

In speech, all of those would get the message across without any real hiccups… I’d simplify it a bit, though, and go for ‘Ai gyda chi dwi angen cysylltu er mwyn newid brawddeg ar wefan yr adran?’… :sunny:

Only if someone was determined to imagine that plan for you - it’s certainly not implicit in the actual language…:wink:

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#551

Wonderful! So in any sentence like “Having a good dictionary is very useful” or “Having a cat is a joy but can be annoying at times” “I’d like to have a house by the sea” I could use cael for the impersonal forms of to have, right?

#552

Brilliant, diolch!

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#553

Yup, you could. Interestingly, those made me second guess myself - so it’s possible that this kind of use of ‘cael’ is an anglicisation, and that ‘bod efo/gyda’ perhaps more ‘natural/correct’ - but you’ll certainly hear ‘cael’ being used in this kind of context very often…

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#554

Diolch yn fawr!

#555

Yw mae’r gair ‘weplyfr’ (Facebook yn yr Saesneg) cyfansoddair? Dw i’n gwybod ‘llyfr’ (book yn yr Saesneg) ond beth gair edrych fel ‘wep’?

Is the word ‘weplyfr’ (Facebook in English) a compound word? I know ‘llyfr’ (book in English) but what word looks like ‘wep’?

#556

This is pure conjecture, so wait for someone who knows more for any sort of confirmation (or refutation!). The usual word for “face” in Welsh is “wyneb” and, according to my Y Geiriadur Mawr there is at least one compound word where that turns into “wynep-” - so my conjecture is that perhaps “wep” is a contraction of the (reverse mutated??) word for face?

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#557

I am slowly staggering my way through that Challenge which seems to contain every word I don’t know and makes me feel as if I’m trying to walk through treacle, without the perk pf the occasional lick! I have faith that things will get easier and I now have the added impulse of realising things could be worse!! I have a nasty phobia of spiders and I’d guess you are surrounded by huge nasty poisonous ones. whereas I am in cold, frosty, safe Scotland!!
p.s. To @stella @owainlurch et al:
Sorry! I did send ‘meddu’ with a warning, but my dictionary didn’t say it was occasional or rare or archaic! I do know my Cymraeg tends to be archaic, mind!!!

#558

Oh, I would like to be able to know the archaic forms! I intend to learn to read Middle Welsh and the Welsh they used in the 18th-19th centuries, so that I am able to read old texts.
I’m doing a course on the Red Book of Hargest now, to understand Middle Welsh better.

#559

Our interests are so similar, but I have forgotten what you are learning, and I don’t expect to relearn it at my age!!

#560

I thought that was plausible for the same reasons but could not see how wyneb/p became wep for it, I’m sure someone will have a definitive answer :smile: Diolch!

#561

I can’t call it learning, really:) It’s just a course in reading: there is a line of the ancient text, then the same line in Modern Welsh and then a Russian translation. Very interesting:)

#562

“gwep” is a word for face. To me, it has an ‘informal’ feel about it, but take that with a pinch of salt!
Sionned may well be right in saying it is a shortening of “gwyneb”. I don’t know.

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#563

I would say more it possibly covers a different sort of meaning without necessarily being rare or archaic, similar to the way you would not use ‘possess’ in English in the sentences under consideration above ["I would like to possess Welsh speaking relatives "] in the same way as ‘have’, without that meaning that “possess” is rare or archaic. Just my take on it, as I said! (and still not saying I am right on this!)

#564

Yup, this, exactly… :sunny:

Very informal.

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#565

I found the phrase " 'co ti " in a novel.

From the context, it probably means something like “take it…”.

(somebody is giving someone else something…a present).

The language used generally is very colloquial, and with a southern flavour.

I would be interested to know what the derivation is, if anyone one knows. For once, google didn’t help.