Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

That depends on how you pronounce Elland. :grinning:

Elan would be standard Welsh sounds, so ‘e’ as in pen and ‘a’ as in hat.

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Just seen this on BBC news website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/42080828 ):
Mae ffatri prosesu ieir newydd, all greu 150 o swyddi, yn agor yn Wrecsam.

The placing of newydd makes it look to me as if it’s saying that the ieir are newydd and it should really say:
Mae ffatri newydd prosesu ieir, all greu 150 o swyddi, yn agor yn Wrecsam.

but is the original placing something that’s perfectly OK in Welsh and just sounds odd because I’m trying to compare it too closely with English?

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I’ll leave that to folk @aran @Iestyn more expert than me, but i saw it in little chunks and was happy to apply newydd to prosesu ieir!

Shouldn’t it say “Mae ffatri…newydd agor”?

Because the factory has just opened?

Or its the ffatri prosesu ieir newydd - the new chicking factory, is also correct.

Newydd brosesu implies theyve just started processing

Ah, I didn’t think of that way of looking at it! But wouldn’t that be “Mae ffatri … newydd cael ei hagor” though?

Yes, I think you could be well be right there …

To me the difference would read like this -

Mae ffatri prosesu ieir newydd, all greu 150 o swyddi…
A new chicken processing factory, able to create 150 jobs… (i.e. the factory is creating the jobs)

Mae ffatri newydd prosesu ieir, all greu 150 o swyddi…
A new factory processing chickens, able to create 150 jobs… (i.e. the chickens are creating the jobs)

… but I suppose it could be argued that the jobs are being created by both, in a manner of speaking!

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…is probably the most natural way of putting it. It is a “ffatri prosesu ieir” that is “newydd”. It is almost exactly equivalent to the English, where a “new” “chicken processing factory” would be the most natural way of expressing it, even though you could think that was a factory for processing new chickens.

Moving the newydd would change the meaning to the factory being newly opened, rather than the new factory opening. Hope that helps!

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Somewhere I picked up the rule-of-thumb that, when you have a string of adjectives you generally exactly reverse the word order that you would use in English. Therefore (as others have already said) if you want to say “new chicken processing factory” you would say what that bbc quote says - ffatri prosesu ieir newydd [factory processing chickens new] - which sounds odd in English but works perfectly in Welsh.

It doesn’t work with ALL adjectives - I think if it were an OLD chicken processing plant it might say hen ffatri prosesu ieir, since hen generally comes before the word it describes.

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But I do have a second question, based on the last phrase of the sentence johnwilliams quoted.

[quote=“johnwilliams_6, post:3326, topic:3153”]
yn agor yn Wrecsam.[/quote]
In English, that sentence might have read that the new factory “has opened in Wrexam.” Would it be possible to change that last phrase to "wedi agor yn Wrecsam" or is that not good Welsh?

Though as the factory is a ‘thing’ would we need to say “has been opened”, i.e. “wedi cael ei hagor”, as it can’t really open itself?

‘Yn agor yn Wrecsam’ - Is open in Wrexham.

That’s how I see it anyway (usual warnings apply).

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Ah, as I thought. I was just mulling over the Anglicised version which sounds slightly Yorks/NE and not very Welsh: Eeeeland. Also the Lotus car, which sounds a bit closer, although the stress seems to be on the wrong syllable. Then Elland Road came to mind.

Diolch i chi gyd am eich ymatebion.

Does anyone know the slangy word for ‘heads up’ as in "just a quick heads up’

Or do I just use the phrase “quick update” ?

That would be fine common use - lots of structures like that get used in that more English way - ‘wedi cael ei agor’ isn’t something I hear all that much now.

The example given up above here is a good fit for the English ‘A new chicken processing factory is opening in Wrecsam’… :slight_smile:

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This sort of stuff almost never has a neat equivalent - so you’ll often hear the idiom get used in English - ‘mi wna i roi heds yp i chdi pan bydd yn barod’ sort of thing - or you might hear something like ‘ga i jesd rhybuddio chdi’… plenty of options…

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Didn’t ‘le weekend’ enter French by that sort of route? I’m not sure if it got shoved out again by the French Language police, but at one stage it was very common!

Is there an equivalent phrase to “let alone”

For example: “I can barely speak English let alone Welsh”

you could use ‘heb sôn am’ or ‘llai fyth’
so “heb sôn am Gymraeg” or “llai fyth y Gymraeg”

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I say, in English, never mind or much less, so llai fyth makes sense to me and heb sôn am is a bit like ‘never mind’!

Heb sôn am - without talking about so more not to mention really