In case it helps (you, or anyone else). Windows only though, I think.
Thanks Mike, I’ll be changing to an android phone very soon hopefully though. 
@aran @gruntius Thanks for the help. I think I need a lot more exposure. I think part of my problem is not thinking about possession, per se - for example, when we did “neuadd y pentre” in the lessons, that threw me because I was thinking of “village” in “village hall” as an adjective, instead of “the hall belonging to the village”. And the “the” vs “a” part of it confuses me as well. We have
THE … of THE …
A … of A …
but Anna’s house is THE house of Anna which doesn’t fit either pattern.
I’m not explaining myself well, because I don’t understand it well enough. I’ll keep trying to find examples as I listen and read and eventually I’m sure it will make sense 
edited to add: I don’t have a to bach key either…going to check out the suggestions from @mikeellwood…Diolch!
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For all of you who have trouble with the to bach - here’s another suggestion (which I use especially for ŵ and ŷ): http://welsh.typeit.org/
They have special characters available in a lot of languages, but the link goes to the Welsh version. Just type in what you want, then copy it to whatever you’re typing.
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Well, yesss… it is and it isn’t! I think you’re trying a little too hard here to fit Welsh into English shapes, which never works all that well… so you’re thinking ‘Well, we say ‘Anna’s house’, but that actually means ‘THE house of Anna’, so we have to have something in Welsh that implies the definite article there as well, BECAUSE!’
But we don’t. It’s just ‘tŷ Anna’. If you want to force a definite article onto it, you could say ‘Y tŷ mae Anna yn byw ynddo’ - which sounds about as natural as ‘The house of Anna’…
I think the less you worry about it, and the more you focus on getting plenty of exposure to the living language, in whatever way possible, the less of an issue it will be for you…
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I know it’s a mistake in principle to keep referring back to English, rather than just letting Welsh be Welsh, but in this respect I don’t honestly feel that it’s that different from English usage. (I say this having had a similar problem with Old English, where the form of the definite article changes, and I had great fun trying to figure out which of the two nouns the ‘the’ went with, until I realized that it was basically the same as Modern English…)
Would you be happy with the following definitions?
A princess is the daughter of a queen.
AND
The princess is the daughter of the queen.
I think that in English the ‘daughter’ bit is effectively unmarked as to definiteness: what matters is whether there’s one particular, specific queen or not. (Similarly, “I bought a sheep’s head from the butcher” = “the head of a sheep”; the sheep has – had! – only one head, so it gets a ‘the’ in the second version, but in the first version it’s the fact that it’s not a specific sheep that matters. If it’s a specific sheep, “he saw the sheep’s head poking above the bars of the stall” = “the head of the sheep”.)
So in Welsh, Mi welais i ben dyn / Mi welais i ben y dyn (I think that works, although I’ve randomly changed it to a man’s head rather than a sheep’s…)
And then in the case of Anna’s house, what’s going to decide whether you need a ‘the’ or not isn’t the house, it’s whether or not you need a ‘the’ in front of ‘Anna’: “Anna’s house” = “the house of Anna”, “the Anna’s house” = “the house of the Anna”.
(I hope I’m not labouring the point – there are languages that would certainly do things differently. In Greek you’d need a definite article even with the name, and you would say "the house of the Anna! )
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I’ve got this, but nit picking!:
Dw i’n mynd i ty gwyrdd = I am going to the greenhouse
I am a silly, i don’t have a greenhouse so:
Dw i’n mynd i brynu ty gwyrdd = i am going to buy a greenhouse
However, when I get to the shop there is one green house, one red house and one yellow house. So, would it still be good Welsh to say:
Dw i’n mynd i brynu y ty gwyrdd = I am going to buy THE green house ?
Probably, and maybe I’m trying to force it the other way around, as well, but it sometimes helps me get past the "Wait, why is it “neuadd Y pentre?” moments I know I just need more exposure, but it’s something I’ve been mulling over in the back of my mind for quite a while now - not worried, just thought that since the subject came up, I’d ask.
@RichardBuck Thanks a bunch for unpacking that for me. I will process that for a bit and see if I can think of any examples where I still get stuck (or maybe I won’t!)
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This looks fine to me…but hey, I’m in here asking questions, too! Are you continuing the discussion regarding possessives, or is this a separate question? Because here “gwyrdd” is an adjective, describing the house, so there’s no possession involved. It just follows the “adjectives (mostly) come after the noun” rule, and you would say “ty gwyrdd” = a green house, or “y ty gwyrdd” = the green house, as needed…
If that made no sense, or isn’t answering the question you were asking, ignore it…I’m awfully tired today
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For getting ŷ/ŵ, for those of you lucky enough to have Mac OS X, you can change your keyboard layout to a Welsh layout. Opt+ then gives the rooftop’d version of that vowel.
On Ubuntu Linux, AltGr+’, then pressing the vowel will give you the rooftop’d version as well.
Shame that Windows doesn’t seem to have any built-in method, and that you need to resort to websites like that (however useful they might be!)
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No, I’m not talking about possessives at all. I’m just checking my understanding of when ‘the’ can be dropped and if when it is needed that it’s can be in this form, inspired by this discussion.
The possessive ‘y’ in my understanding is that this use of ‘the’ is outside the English use, it’s more an ‘of the’, however when translated to English, which doesn’t use the ‘of the’ form commonly. Then ‘neuadd y pentre’ translates to ‘the village hall’ but in Welsh I understand it as ‘the hall of the village’. In English the sense of possession feels weaker somehow. This may just be me of course!
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I installed To Bach on my US keyboard Windows computer. The advanced help on the website says it will work on a US keyboard by using CTRL+ALT instead of the AltGR key. At first it didn’t appear to work, but then I discovered that I have to use the ALT key on the right-hand side of the keyboard - it apparently works differently than the one on the left side. So now I can type tŷ Anna without having to cut and paste characters from somewhere else!
Diolch @mikeellwood!
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why isn’t it Dw i’n mynd i’r ty gwyrdd for I’m going to THE green house?
You can do even more with the To Bach utility by fiddling with its configuration file, and add accents, etc for other languages. I’m a bit rusty on details, but I can look them up if anyone’s interested.
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I think tŷ gwyrdd slightly complicates matters because it feels somewhere between a compound word and a loan word - I can easily imagine hearing ‘i’r tŷ gwyrdd’ used in most of those examples - which wouldn’t happen, for example, with tŷ dy fam etc…
It’s ‘ty gwydr’, I blame bwtcamp for making things up, even when I can look things up! I think it’s because the y yr or 'r is very soft and I don’t often think of it. So generally, it is ‘dw i’n mynd i brynu’r ty gwydr’. Rather than lengthen to ‘brynu y ty’ for emphasis as you would in English, perhaps the way to emphasis is ‘prynu’r ty gwydr honna’. I’m thinking that the ‘the’ is less hard than it is in English , but still there.
Thinking about it, I was talking in with my Polish colleague today and we were talking about an order book of a supplier, ‘ei lyfr’ was what she used (the book of ordering, it’s book), whereas I was using ‘yr llyfr’ more in the English style. Maybe the possessive form comes more easily to those of us from non-native English backgrounds?
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New question from a beginner (feeling elated for just finishing challenge 5 and understanding most (but not all) of the first listening challenge 
):
Is there a rule that I haven’t picked up about using past tense on i’n versus dw i wedi bod?
e.g. I think I understand that ‘on i’n isio’ would never be ‘dw i wedi bod isio’, but what about on i’n trio - could that be dw i wedi bod yn trio?
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Probably easiest to think of them as: On i’n drio - i was trying.
Dw i wedi bod yn drio - i have been trying.
Cheers J.P.
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Diolch J.P.,
So, I understand from what you have said that they are reasonably interchangeable, but you would not really say ‘I have been wanting’ or ’ I have been needing’, which is why we don’t use that form with isio or angen. Have I interpreted that correctly?
Sarah
You could use "I have been wanting/needing in certain contexts such as ,"I have been wanting to do that for a long time ( dwi wedi bod eisiau gwneud hwnna am answer hir) but i think that the “yn” would always get dropped before eisiau or angen
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