Rydw in isiau ? Ah sorry Aran i didnt see you reply.
Well I’m trying to dissect sentences written by natives and for which I also have a translation. Like my beloved lyrics booklet, where I find expressions that I’m sure not in study books 
, and also, from time to time, unusual words that have probably been chosen for their sound or to fit the metric or something like that.
I have to admit I kinda enjoy the idea of speaking with such an odd mix of a vocabulary! 
I usually start trying to guess what the sentence means.
Then check a mix of dictionary and Google Translate.
Then compare results with official translation.
And then…ask here because I don’t understand how they can differ so much! 
While watching a video I heard something that seemed something like d’ya know what I mean?
The closest I could get ti the sounds I heard is:
ti'n gwbod beth sy da fi?
It mostly makes sense, but what’s the sy da (or whatever else it might be instead?)
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That sounds like it’s probably right – I’ve only heard the Northern version be’ sy’ gen i, but as the only difference is Southern gyda for Northern gan it looks OK to me.
Sy is short for sydd, which is the special form of the verb ‘is’ that you use in relative clauses – it basically means ‘which is’.
So Ti’n gwbod beth sy 'da fi would be “Do you know what [it is] that is with me?” or “Do you know what I’ve got?” and it is used idiomatically to mean “Do you know what I mean?”
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Thank you, RichardBuck. I’ve never quite understood ‘sydd.’ This helps tremendously.
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Shwmae - Hi all 
Quick question!
I hear different Welsh speakers say the placenames Aberystwyth (aber-ist … or aber-uh’st) and Powys ( po-wys … or … Pow-ys) differently?
Is there a correct pronunciation for them or both ways fine? Am I hearing dialectal influence?
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Going by ‘pure’ Welsh phonetics, aber-uh’st and po-wys could be said to be technically better, but basically…
yes and yes 
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Diolch!
So who says the non-technical version? I heard the less technical version from people living in Mid Wales growing up, but confusingly my welsh speaking family would say different pronunications for the same place when speaking English or Welsh!? never got an explanation lol
I grew up on the Mid Wales border where the less tech version was mainly used and we always referred to Aberystwyth as Aber.
Ll was pronounced L even though people lived in villages with names starting with Ll. I still find this difficult to remember to use with local place names.
Lots of the villages with Welsh names are still pronounced in English form and where there is also an English name this is generally used instead of the Welsh one.
I try my best to use Welsh dialect and name when I can but this is strange to most people and you end up repeating yourself or explaining.
This will be a hard nut to crack.
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probably due to english influence that if they aren’t pronouncing ll
Ravenstein in 1878, a German-English geographer-cartogher did a tour of Britain and Ireland in 1878 notes exact lingual boundaries. Even back then the Maesyfed area (radnoreshire) had lost most of its Welsh between 1650s and 1850s
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Yes, I’ve noticed this on occasions too - I’ve wondered though whether it might be something to do with the fact that when a Ll village name is preceded by many prepositions the Ll is mutated to L, e.g. Dw i’n mynd i Lansilin, and a lot of the time when people mention a village they’re talking about going to/coming from it, so L might tend to get used all the time instead of Ll??
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As a child, although I didn’t sense animosity, I definitely got the feeling it wasn’t “the done thing” to use Welsh pronunciation. Not from my parents, my mother always wanted to learn and would have loved SSIW and my father was a South Walian and proud.
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Another example is Gwersyllt in the Wrexham area (north) … it used to be right on the lingual boundary which had existed for a long time. Although the lingual border has shifted westwards, the legacy is that many non-Welsh speakers there pronounce it like any English resident… Gwuh-silt … no pronunciation of ll.
English monoglot influence
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Interesting map, got the magnifying glass out and I used to live on the border of an over 60% area, Llynclys. So near and yet so far.
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Swydd Amwythig/ Shropshire? I read that Trefonen was majority Welsh speaking until 1930s but that was literally the last stand of indigeneous Welsh within the English border. Almost all Welsh speakers in England today are self-taught or immigrants from Wales. (I say almost all…because who knows…did it ever truly die out in trefonen from farming families?)
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Just my non-native take on it:
Yes it’s similar in South Wales. It’s difficult to be certain of how to pronounce some place names, depending on which language you are speaking and not wishing to come across as pedantic or on the other hand, lazy. Ive been corrected both ways in the past, but mostly in a helpful way.
The wy sound can be tricky: oo-i or oy. Also Ll , ae, au, eu, etc. There’s no infallible geographical pattern to it - I find it easier to just copy someone. Or a couple of people, one speaking Welsh and one English 
Anyway, if it gets weird, I keep this in my back pocket - Not many people pronounce my town, Newcastle properly (not even me).
A question to finish, please:
What is the correct “whys” pronunciation in Gwenwhyseg, please?.
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To add a small point to Richard’s reply, you will often hear on soaps, and similar “beth sy?”
(or “be’ sy?”), which more or less means “what’s up with you?” or “what’s the matter with you?” or similar.
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Yes, my aunt’s family, only a couple of miles to the south of Trefonen were a Welsh-speaking farming family.
Am byd bach! I was only talking about Llynclys with @RichardBuck last week at our meetup in Oxford
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Sorry to disturb, but the quick one:
In the FB group " Dw i’n dysgu Cymraeg / I’m learning Welsh" we (well I did actually) opened the discussion about the ti/chi thing and it came to my eye that “chi”, no matter who is it addressed to, is always written with non-capitalized c. In my language there’s a rule that when you address someone respectively you use word “Vi” (Chi in Welsh) written with capital V (it would be C in Welsh). This is out of respect and because normally written “vi” would address the group of people you’re talking to (just like in Welsh with chi).
Now the question: Does the rule of writing Chi with capital C, when addressing someone respectively, aply in Welsh too or not?
I thought I’ve seen it written that way some times but putting question in front of me by another member of the group, I’m not sure anymore. She said to me that she never have seen Chi written that way even in the respective manner.
Thanks for the answer.
Hwyl!
Tatjana
Its not a rule in Welsh to capitalise the formal. Only propernouns (names, and placenames) get capitalised in Welsh.
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