Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Hi, All. For collect, as in kids, shopping, etc, casglu seems to always come to my mind. Does that sound 1st language enough? Also, how about Dal, Yn ôl, Hal etc. Do they all sound OK please?

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I can’t answer your question, but casglu is probably the word I’ve heard several times in songs and on the radio but wasn’t able to spell it and therefore I couldn’t find it in the dictionary!

The topic seemed to be money and possessions…it might work, I guess! :smiley:

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Generally yes, casglu would be the one although you might also hear variations on ‘fetch’ (which can be the same context) such as nôl or hel. dal is catch rather than collect or fetch, but I suppose it depends on how much trouble you’re having collecting/fetching the kids! :thinking::laughing:

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That’s right for bai as a noun, but here I think it’s actually an old/literary subjunctive form of bod – “(if it) were”. For example, here’s a recent item on Golwg360 about Brexit:
Roedd Boris Johnson wedi honni na fyddai’r £39 miliwn yn ddyledus i’r UE pe na bai cytundeb…
Boris Johnson had claimed that the £39 billion [‘naw’ causing a confusing nasal mutation of biliwn to miliwn, I think] would not be owed to the EU if there were no agreement…

So Oni bai… is a set phrase meaning “Unless it were…”: it gets used in the further set phrase Heb os nac oni bai… – definitely, without a doubt, without quibble or qualification – “without any ‘if’ or ‘unless it were’…” [I think: ready, as ever, to stand corrected by those with better knowledge!]

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For the word for bean: ffeuen or ffâen

Both come up in the dictionary as the singular but what one is more common?

ffeuen is much more commonly used :slight_smile:

Diolch!

Hefyd:
For little bear, arth bach or arth fach?
Arth is female and male so to mutate or not?
I’ve tried cysill but it says both are correct. So if both are correct what one would you default to?

Whats the gender of the bear?

I’d default to feminine - for instance, I’ve only ever heard ‘polar bear’ as ‘arth wen’, never as ‘arth gwyn’.

I’m not sure…

So female bear : arth fach
Male bear: arth bach
And an unknown gender bear ? You see one in the street and you say ‘hey that’s a little bear!’

I’m trying to think of kids books and I can only think of ‘you and me little bear’ and that is arth bach but is that bear actually Male?

I kinda remembered someone talking about Welsh being different than English with negative sentences, that in my mind automatically translates into “it must be like Italian, then”.
All of a sudden I’m confused, then, doubt of the day:

if I want to say I don’t know anything [about…], which one should I use?
Sai’n gwbod unrhwybeth
Sai’n gwbod dim byd
Dw i’n gwbod dim byd

:thinking:

It’s tricky in Welsh, gender neutrals don’t exist but ambiguous nouns do :joy:

My wife and her mother tend to refer to things as male. So for “it” she normally uses “fo” unless she knows it’s female. So she’d probably say arth bach. Then again, there is the Welsh saying “O Mam bach”, so maybe bach just sounds better?

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Sa i’n gwybod dim byd/unrhywbeth - Are both fine
Dwi ddim yn gwybod dim byd / unrhywbeth

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Could you not also have “Dw i’n gwybod dim byd” as “I know nothing”?

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Only if you say John Snow at the end…or is that wyt ti’n gwybod dim byd :thinking:

But in all seriousness, yes I think you can :blush:

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You see, I’m sure this must be a Game of Thrones reference, unless there’s something about the newsreader I don’t know, but I’ve never seen it… so it’s lost on me!

Oh that’s a shame, believe me it was hilarious :lying_face:

How do you say “Here you are/There you are/Here you go/There you go” in (South) Welsh?

I’ve heard something along the lines of Co (ti) or Go (ti), but I can’t find a direct translation anywhere.

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As you say, it’s 'co ti. It comes from acw, which means there.
The same abbreviation crops up in draw fan’co - over there (whereas in the north you’ll hear draw acw)

Yes I feel the same!

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