Wow, good question!
The one that springs immediately to mind is Gwilym (the Welsh version of William which means protector/defender).
James (apparently) means “one who follows”, so the Welsh version of that is Iago.
Welcome to the forum!
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If you Google “welsh first names” you’ll find quite a few lists of names with their meanings, e.g. this one picked at random has quite a lot https://www.wales101.com/welsh-baby-boys-names
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Hello,
I’ve accumulated a short list of tiny questions over the last several weeks and was wondering if anybody could answer any of them:
- Why is it ‘Oedd o isio i ti ddweud wrthot ti…’ instead of ‘dweud’? My best guess is the ‘i ti’ is an intrusive addition?
- Why is if ‘wrthaf fi’ and not ‘wrtha i’? I admit ‘wrthaf fi’ rolls of the tongue much easier.
- Why is ‘a’ used before ‘weles’ instead of ‘ac’? My guess: w is a consonant in that context?
- I’m really stumped by ‘i’w fwyta’ vs. ‘i fwyta’. As best I can figure out, i’w happens after things involving ‘peth’ (including ‘rhywbeth’) but I can’t make sense of how that translates. Why would there even be an ‘ei’ in that context to begin with? For example: ‘Mae fy nhad isio rhywbeth i’w fwyta.’ vs. ‘Wyt ti wedi cael digon i fwyta rŵan?’ This one confuses me most of all of them.
Ok so maybe it’s not quite so tiny a post, but these questions are bugging me.
Thanks to all who can help!
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I’m no expert, but thought I might have a go at answering - apologies if this causes more confusion, and please feel free to correct.
- Ti is the subject of this sub-clause, so causes a soft mutation of the following word.
- These are both valid options.
- There is an implied pre-verbal particle (mi or fe) which causes the verb to mutate but hides vowel.
- You’re on the right track. “I’w fwyta” is a contraction of “i ei fwyta (o)”, where the pronoun refers back to the “peth” at the beginning of the sentence. I don’t know if it helps. but I found it made more sense when remembering that “peth” means “thing” even though it would be translated as “what” in questions.
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Thank you! That helps a lot.
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In Level 1, Challenge 14:
She said she wanted to speak with me.
Dwedodd hi bod hi’n moyn siarad gyda fi.
So far okay - I assume that the “pseudo past tense” (subjunctive originally) wanted in EL reported speech isn’t needed here; after all, they are talking about the present (same thing in my native German). However:
Dwedodd hi bod hi’n moyn siarad gyda fi neithiwr. She is saying something about the past here. So why is it not:
Dwedodd hi oedd hi’n moyn siarad gyda fi neithiwr?
Or in other words, why can I combine bod and neithiwr here? Does the bod perhaps not signal the present at all? Is the whole thing a kind of she-stated-being-in-a-state-of-wanting-to …, no matter whether now or last night?
Sorry for the long explanation, I hope this still qualifies as a “tiny question”. 
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I think the answer us that at that time what she said was “I want to speak with you”, I.e. present tense. Using oedd hi’n moyn… would imply that at that time what she had said was that she had wanted to speak with you at some unspecified time previous to that occasion
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This seems to be a pattern with bod. It always seems to be followed by present tense. @rich explained why to me once, but I can’t remember why, just that this is the case 
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@johnwilliams_6 Aargh, bingo, of course!! So bod does refer to the present. Thank you so much.
@emma-ireland Yes, Rich had explained that to me, too, a few questions further up. What had stumped me here was that I imagined the lady saying: “I wanted to speak with you last night”, and then someone reporting this. However, as johnwilliams has clarified, the situation is that she just said: “I want to speak with you” - and she said this last night. In which case the bod fits, of course.
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Sorry, I’ve got another one, also in Challenge 14:
dwedodd hi bod hi vs. dwedodd e fod e
Why do the mutations differ here? I’m aware that the answer might very well be “they just do”, but in case there is a particular reason could someone tell me?
The reason is a bit technical… the “correct” form of bod varies from person to person, and bod is mutated according to the same mutations that occur when forming possessives (nasal for “my”, soft for “your” and “his”, aspirate for her). So you get
fy mod i, dy fod ti, ei bod hi, ei fod e.
In colloquial speech these correct forms are often replaced by “bo’fi, bo’ti, bod e, bod hi”, without the mutations.
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Yes, I think, as you say, that It’s a case of “they just do”. It could perhaps be simply just because it’s a little bit easier to pronounce fod quickly than bod after the open vowel ‘e’?
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@Hendrik Really really interesting! So the content clause structure is in fact something like He said his being … whatever, like you could do with some verbs in English as well (I mentioned my having been at Mainz university etc.)
Dankeschön!
So does that mean it would be okay to say dwedodd e bod e … rather than fod e? After all, in the first challenges it was Mae fe’n meddwl bo’ fi’n siarad … and not mod i’n siarad, right?
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Yes, that would be okay to say, but don’t be surprised if you hear “mod i”, or even the full “fy mod i” (although this is quite rare in natural unaffected speech).
If memory serves correctly, the older “courses” (rather than the newer levels) use “mod i” instead of bo’fi.
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Thanks everyone, you’re stars!
Qwestwn byr / quick question.
How would I say something like: when I do X, Y doesn’t happen?
Basically I wanna say “when I enter my postcode, the house number does not appear”.
Would it be something like:
“Pan dwi’n rhoi fy nghod post mewn, nid yw’r rhif ty yn ymdangos”?
I have to say that forming negative statements in the middle of sentences after a conditional bit is quite difficult for me!
Diolch.
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Sounds OK. Possibly “i mewn”. Also the trick in natural sounding speech is generally to avoid “nid” unless there’s a noun or pronoun after it, like Nid John. I think the SSiW pattern would be something like Dyw 'r rhif ty (ddim) yn ymddangos.
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"If memory serves correctly, the older “courses” (rather than the newer levels) use “mod i” instead of bo’fi."
They use both and, in spite of the general superiority of the new courses, the first two levels of the old course definitely made the mutations (especially the nasal and spirant ones) far clearer to me than all 3 levels of the new course.
For anyone interested, the relevant lessons are Course 2 lessons 20 - 22 or 23 inclusive.
Oh yea of course! Thanks!!
I’m writing a story for the eisteddfod so I’m trying to write nicely 
When I use verb forms in the past like collais, bwytais, etc is it best to include the pronoun e.g. “collais i’r bws” or to leave it out e.g. “collais y bws”?