Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Here’s a copy of that sentence (I’d forgotten about the treiglad) - I was wondering whether perhaps it might represent a pronunciation in Bethesda where the book is set?

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This is what Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru says:

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Difyr iawn.

You do see ỳ from time to time - I hadn’t particularly noticed it in a dictionary previously - @garethrking, be’ ydi’r hanes yma sỳr?! :wink:

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They use the to signify an ‘uh’ sound where by position we would expect the y to have the ‘ee’ sound - generally therefore this is in single-syllable loanwords from English having U as the vowel. Often they substitute w for this of course. So beside jwg, you could have jỳg, the latter actually sounding like ‘jug’! :slight_smile:

If this isn’t fun, I don’t know what is!

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Manon reckons it was the work of a keen-eyed editor - so no, not making any particular point about Bethesda accents… :wink:

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Especially when dealing with jug! Having a name beginning with ‘j’ means I am very aware of it’s dubious presence in words like ‘garej’, where, at least it would be hard to use anything else, but ‘siwg’ might do well enough for ‘jug’! :wink:

I’m OK with J in loanwords, myself. The siwg option strikes me as faintly zealous, doesn’t it you? And as for garej, well what is the alternative? - garesi is obviously no good. :slight_smile:

It’s also used when loanwords beginning ch- (in English) get a soft mutation:

gormod o jips
too many chips

:wink:

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I did say garej was lacking options, unless we called it ‘ty-car’ or would that be ‘ty-gar’! :wink: But ‘chips’? Why not sglodion? Dw i’n hoffi sglodion! Yum! Oh, er, iym???

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Well yes, so do I - iỳm iỳm indeed!
But if you want to sound like a NATIVE speaker, say chips/ jips ! :slight_smile:

(sglodyn was originally a chip off a block of wood or similar - then adopted by the language planners for its more common use these days)

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Your aversion to loanwords is very well known here…and I have to admit that when I first started speaking Welsh properly I hated them too and always tried to use the ‘proper’ Welsh word for everything. But English has a huge amount of loanwords and that fact never did it any harm! :wink:

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I was teasing a bit over chips, but it is hard to know when words have been grabbed and kept or whether words heard on Cyw are due to the language purists pushing a ‘proper’ alternative to what everybody actually says and will carry on saying! Chips it will be for me in future!

The learners’ novel Modrybedd Afradlon has a character in it who is a retired school teacher. She is always insisting on the “perfectly good Welsh words” for things instead of loanwords. It has been a long time since I read it, but I think she relaxed a bit about it later.

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Let’s hope so… :wink:

Yes - you get this ‘language police’ phenomenon mostly with minority languages, I’m afraid.

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I suppose we must also mention “sosej” in this context.
I will quietly think to myself “selsigen”, but say nothing. :slight_smile:

OK. I’m using this as an excuse to ask an obscure question that has interested me for sometime:

Is the Welsh mwg for smoke related to the English/Norse muggy for humid drizzly type weather?

Also, as I’m on a roll, do we use muggy in English in Wales and S England Westpondia, etc, and @Novem, does it or something like muggi ever get used in Scandinavian countries for mist?

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Not that I know of, though I don’t speak any Scandinavian language very well so I’m not much help :smile:

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[quote=“JohnYoung, post:3963, topic:3153”]
the English/Norse muggy for humid drizzly type weather?[/quote]
Huh. Over here, “muggy” only means very humid, not drizzly at all. We have a lot of it in the summer (out here in the middle of the country).

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I love it! Anyone else at 17 wouldn’t speak Scandinavian languages at all @novem just doesn’t speak them very well!

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Same here in southeast England.

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