There are Welsh placenames for every inch of Wales btw (although its not well advertised)…and many of the places which once spoke Welsh (Southern Scotland to Southern England have older Welsh names)
Learnt about this during post-colonialism studies in the Britain and Ireland module
In English medium school in Wales this was never covered sadly … but I think its worth covering at least briefly to get a sense of where you live
To all those who’ve been discussing Lamphey/Llandyfái, I finally got around to checking the fairly definitive “Dictionary of the Place-names of Wales” by Hywel Wyn Owen and Richard Morgan, and this is what the entry there says:
In SSiW challenges I remember always hearing trio for trying/to try.
Today I found a few texts around the web where geisio (that I believe I had seen before as ceisio) translated as trying instead.
What is the difference?
Also, in two sentences they were preceded by wrth (that I don’t remember ever seeing before verbs), like this:
mae ambell berson wedi mynd i ddyfroedd dyfnion wrth geisio canu’r anthem genedlaethol yn gyhoeddus
(…) ac anawsterau wrth geisio dilyn acen gogledd Cymru ac weithiau de Cymru ar raglenni teledu a radio Cymraeg
When is it used?
And since we’re here how would you translate (the meaning of) dilyn in this sentence?
Ceisio is an older, more formal word - more ‘Welsh’, you might say, if you don’t believe in loan words or new words, but ‘trio’ has been around for a heck of a long time now, and is much more common.
‘Wrth geisio’ - while trying - in the act of trying - probably one of the constructs where you’ll still here ceisio more often than not, although everyone would understand ‘wrth drio’.
Dilyn in your second sentence is a bit of an Anglicisation - it’s ‘follow’ as in ‘to follow the meaning of something’…
Trying to figure out all the possible way to say “that”! (I suspect using Italian or Spanish instead of English would help clarify in this case, but anyway!)
I think that you should feel proud of yourself for doing so well - Dwi’n meddwl y dylet ti deimlo’n falch ohonot ti dy hunan am neud mor dda.
You said that you thought it was fairly good - Dwedest ti bo ti’n meddwl bod hi’n eitha da.
I thought [that] you said that you wanted a cup of tea - O’n i’n meddwl i ti ddweud bo ti’n moyn dishgled o de.
Question: why y in the first, bod in the second, and i in the third after meddwl?
Example:
I met someone in the pub last night who said that he knows the young woman - Wnes i gwrdd â rhywun yn y dafarn neithiwr ddwedodd fod e’n nabod y fenyw ifanc
Question: Why nothing here? When can you just skip “that” in Welsh?
I’ve been trying to compose an answer, but I’m ending up confusing myself! It depends on things like whether the ‘that’ in question is a conjunction or a relative pronoun and what comes before or after… so rather than giving a very long-winded and confusing answer, I think I should hand this one over to @garethrking
I was involved in quite a discussion about this a while back - possibly more than one actually as I thought Gareth was involved but in fact it ends with a quote from his book - and I have actually managed to find it!..see what you think. I’ll look to see if there is another (found - see link 2 below) …I’m on about version 4 of this post because I can’t spell either this morning!
Thanks a lot @rich.
I always try a search first, but although I was able to clarify taw, na and a few other “that” I could not find these posts you linked- so much stuff in this forum (and thread)!
edit: reading your answer I realized I also often get lost in the dictionary (Modern Welsh - reference section) and forget the intro section!
There is also the intriguing “trial” which I occasionally hear from southern speakers on S4C. http://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html
shows it as a variation of trio (which it admits is a loan word, but in use from at least 1679).
conjunction ‘that’: bod (etc) if the quoted original begins with verb bod present (or impf); y if it begins with any other verb, including other tenses of bod - though there is an option of using i when it’s a preterite; mai/taw if it begins with something that isn’t a verb at all.
This is always fun, isn’t it?
‘Sheer enjoyment, standing room only’, as a Welsh friend of mine used to say with heavy irony.
There’s a new book on the way, and a fair proportion of the content revolves round ‘that’-clauses - so I’m thinking (reminded by this thread - thank you @gisella-albertini) THAT (!) a nice appendix on the subject might be a good idea to include.
Ok, thanks!
However, this makes me think the right question was probably:
why no sydd yn or sy’n (that I had memorized as who) as in
I know someone who likes that film - Dw i’n abod rhywun sy’n hoffi’r ffilm 'na -
OK - that’s because sy(dd) is present tense - it’s a special relative verb, and is the only one of its kind. So in other words, bod is unusual in having a special (present tense only!) relative form including the ‘who’. All other tenses, and all other verbs, need the particle a, which is often dropped, though the mutation isn’t.
Y fenyw sy’n dod yfory - the girl who is coming today Y fenyw (a) fydd yn dod yfory - the girl who will come tomorrow Y fenyw (a) ddaw yfory - the girl who will come tomorrow Y fenyw (a) ddaeth ddoe - the girl who came yesterday
Drwg for ill? For S Walians: Today I told a friend that my wife, Glenda was “teimlo’n ddrwg” for feeling ill; (it just came out that way ) I know that Glenda would have said “feeling bad/bard” Fortunately, I realised in time and changed it to “sal”. Our friend didn’t bat an eyelid and I subsequently noticed it in the GPC dictionary as a very low down-the-list-definition of “Ill”.
"Cael Drwg" for getting scolded? For N Walians. I noticed this whist checking the GPC for “Drwg”. Although “Getting wrong” for getting told off/scolded is etched into my NE England vocabulary, I’ve never heard anywhere else. Any thoughts on the English or Welsh versions please?
I’ve got to say that I am really enjoying the N and S dialectal intricacies. There seem to be so many reflections of my hidden English vocabulary.