Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Diolch. Here they are deer ticks, bigger than the hislod we had on Gower! Mind now we get 8 month collars which kill off ticks all through the sêason! Probem, Toffi gets clipped and groomed regularly and it gets harder to get her tick collar off!

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I’m trying to remember what the construction dydy o ddim fel… means - I know I’ve come across it before, but I’ve just seen it again in a book I’m reading…
Does “dyw pobl ddim fel pe baen nhw’n gallu credu pa mor wael y gall pethau fynd” mean “it seems as though people can’t believe how much worse things can get”? Or something like that?

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yes, although it’s not a ‘like-for-like’ translation, the ‘fel pe’ bit equates to the ‘as though’ / ‘as if’ bit.

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Time for me to ask a quick one:

Dwi fod

Example: “Sut dwi fod i gogio bo’ ni erioed wedi cyfarfod o’r blaen?”*

This is not something I ever recall learning in formal lessons all those years ago, so it’s a grammatical construct that I’ve picked up by osmosis and only really understand from context. To me, although it doesn’t translate literally, it runs something along the lines of “I ought to be” or “I’m supposed to be”.

Anyone know how this is formally translated? Is it an ‘official’ part of the language, or is it colloquial?

Thanks!

*Bonus points for identifying where that is from. :slight_smile:

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Yes, it’s ‘official’, not just colloquial :slight_smile: and in this context it is translated as ‘supposed to’.

  • Y Cledrau - “Cyfarfod O’r Blaen” :wink:
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I think it cropped up in one of the Course 3 lessons too, life isn’t easy, but it’s not meant to be easy - “So bywyd yn hawdd, ond so fe i fod yn hawdd”

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Contraction of ‘ydwi i fod’ - see/hear also ‘Yma wyf innau i fod’ ayyb…

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Oh, thanks. Makes sense seeing it like that!

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Odd question. I got my Llety Arall email newsletter today and have run across one item that I can’t really quite suss out (and neither can Google Translate). They are looking for people to help write the certificates (to send out to the investors, I presume) but I get lost in the middle. It’s the *sgwenu sownd twt" that I"m hung up on.

My guess is that it is something like “…who can write neatly to write 300…”

yes, who can write correctly and neatly. Sownd here is like the English “his judgement is sound”

Ah, good - that makes more sense than I could get. Thanks!

… or in Scots: As soond as a poond :smiley:

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I’m obviously too late and wrong, but it sounds a bit like Arlington Way, by Cerys.

Anyway, you are going to kill me for this -
I’ve got a feeling that “sbos” is Gwenhwyseg for “supposed”.

Sbo is used down 'ere too.

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I often hear snippets of things in the background when people are speaking and can get the gist of what’s being said quite often, but I miss a lot of the actual words. Not a problem for getting the gist usually, but a little annoying, in terms of wanting to say the same thing myself maybe one day. This morning what I heared someone saying to their daughter sounded something like this.

rhoi cusan a fi …aros fan hyn

the question is could the bit I missed here have been wna i?

rhoia cusan i fi. wna i aros fan hyn.

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Sounds ok. I’ll try it out on site sometime, to see what reaction I get :smiley:

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could have been… or ‘wedyn’… but don’t get frustrated, this kind of stuff is inevitable until you’ve had enough exposure for your brain to fill gaps in without even telling you what it’s doing… :slight_smile:

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Oh…I can just imagine how that would end up

Thanks - i forgot the context, which was give me a kiss - I’ll wait by here - I knew that what was being said, but couldn’t hear all the detail and wanted to bank it for possible future use

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…sgwennu sownd twt…"

I would imagine that sownd here is attached - ie joined up writing, what we always referred to as “sgwennu dwbl” (double writing) in school. I think sound can be used like that in English as well, but I’m always a bit unsure about stuff I would use in English, because it’s often “Valleys speak”, ie directly imported from Welsh into English!

Twt =tidy

So: who can do joined up writing tidily for the certificates.

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