Certain phrases reduce me to silence every time. I have never yet remembered how to say them.
“Awn ni”
“Beth am i ni gael”
Anything with something sounding like “nag” in the middle that seems to be a negative.
Anything with another linking word in the middle that is so elusive that I can’t remember what it is.
At least I can now say the usual things about the children.
Back to Challenge 17 or so I think, and take another run through.
By the way, @margarethall, I love your picture.
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They are all definitely on the little train in the brain and WILL come back round, I promise!
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What does Awn ni and Beth am an I gael actually translate into/short for? Because it’s not logical and I like logic! The first time they said it I had a little internal tantrum “I’m not learning that! It doesn’t make sense!”.
@sianlinden
Awn ni … means literally “Are we going to…”
Beth am i ni gael = How about we get …?
(Grammatically, awn ni is the conjugated form of to go, 1st person plural. It’s used for present tense and the future, depending on context)
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Similarly tasen i’n gofin. What’s wrong with Os dwi ofin? I’m onto challenge 21 now so slightly over my annoyance of it but it makes me doubt when there seems to be so many varied ways to say something.
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Taswn i is a special form of the verb ‘to be’ (admittedly not immediately recognizable as such) used for hypotheticals – like English “were I to ask”, meaning much the same as “if I asked”. To be honest, the English is pretty irregular too – it’s not the usual ‘I’ form, it’s not from the same root as ‘am’ – it’s not even from the same root as ‘be’, even though bod is!
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Very interesting. Thank you. Definitely guilty of wanting to oversimplify translations.
and me @sianlinden . Idiom is particularly difficult when translated literally. My father often used to say (as a joke) “elle a des idees au dessus de sa gare” which is French for she has ideas above her station, but taking ‘station’ as a train station, not a ‘status’ as it’s really meant in English. Much idiomatic language completely defies translation. Last week in dosbarth Cymraeg we actually learned our very first bit of idiom (which I can’t completely cofio) - something along the lines of “ffidl y to” (that’s just the tail end of it, I think) and it’s in order to say “don’t give up”… At least with SSIW you get some almost idiomatic ways of expression yourself in Welsh taught fairly early in the process; I find that helpful in that it’s ‘real’ Welsh, not class-room Welsh.
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I love the expression “rhoi’r ffidl yn y to,” which means to give something up and was (supposedly) based on an actual fiddler who decided to give up music and put his fiddle in the roof, which is the literal translation of the phrase.
In the class I go to locally, we love our idioms. 
A current favourite which makes no sense at all when translated into English is “ers oes pys”, (lit. Since the age of peas). It’s used when you want to say you’ve known someone forever, since you were kids.
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@margarethall I wonder if there’s any connection between the peas expression and ‘like two peas in a pod’ in English? We could go on for ever… love idiom, love language, love the forum, ond brecwast beckons!