Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

What does ‘pau’r gair’ mean?

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pau is another word for country, land, territory, region, hundred, district, area, place; habitation, dwelling-place, cottage, place of rest and, in linguistics, domain, so pau’r gair = domain of the word.
There are a couple of options for the plural of llathen, and llatheidi isn’t one of them - but llatheidiau is the plural of llathaid.

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Diolch am yr ymateb cyflym…

I though pau was land…but that didnt help the slightest!

It was posted by a farmer from Mid Ceredigion … he claims that “llatheidi” is what he and his area uses as plural for llathen - although I might have misunderstood him

Some remote parts of Ceredigion have some incredible dialect…there used to be a dialect still influenced by the Irish invasions of the dark ages in the remotest valleys…but died out in 20th century…Ill have to find links one day … Fascinating stuff

A taste of the dialect is as follows
Plwmp - Ceredigion word for ’ a hole (usually a mine entrance) which fits one man at a time’

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I’ve seen a programme on S4C called Arfordir Cymru - Bae Ceredigion.
The presenter interviewed a few older people who had an amazing accent!
Unfortunately I’m not able to catch all the words so no idea if they used unusual expressions

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Your translation fits the VSO but the original does not - I wonder if it’s a feature of a focused clause? I know Ai can be used to alert us to a focused sentence structure. But I’m super new at this.

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Yes, I think it is likely that the fact the Welsh had a focused sentence - the words rearranged for emphasis - that was contributing to the difficulty which led to the question - simply getting the ‘ol head around the overall translation.

The challenge is of course that there is no equivalent ‘emphatic’ structure in written English…so you are left with the choice of:

…skipping over the emphasis and just writing a normal sentence - which doesn’t seem great from the translation point of view…

…having a direct translation which sounds a bit odd to the average person in English (although it sounds exactly like someone from my home town in South Wales!) by saying “The Blues, it was, the best team…” (and why is it said that way, even now? :wink:)

…or tweak the English to create a similar emphasis - by saying: ‘It is…’, ‘it was…’, ‘it will be…’ - in the process of course dropping the ‘word for word’ aspect of the translation.

… generally the last option seems to be used …as the best compromise.

Rich :slight_smile:

Noswaith dda pawb.

I’m trying to write my Christmas cards in Welsh this year and am struggling to decide on how to say ‘To’.

I know its’s Annwyl for dear but just informally for ‘to William’ can I say ‘I William’.

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Yes, I think it will mean: to or for William

Yes, " I William oddi wrth Clare " is fine.

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Diolch John a Siaron.

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waw, diolch. dwlu ar hwn. Love this. Thanks, mate!

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Advanced Content.

I’m about to delve into this section.Should I start at number one, or can I dip in to any if them. i.e. - are they of similar level or is there a progression?

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Did you have a look at this thread?

From my experience, I would start with the most recent series: they are shorter, focused on one or two topics/stories and easier to work on in my opinion!

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Thank you @gisella-albertini

Yes thats right, misoedd/blynyddoedd but If you re still learning it would be 'dwi’n dysgu ers…misoedd/canrifoedd etc

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Hi Ken. Yes, I’d probably start with the Deg y Dysgwyr, then go to the start with Beca’s introduction and just work through them. One a week is a nice pace. If you need a breather anytime, you might like to dip into one of the other items, at the top of the list. Theres no pdf with Catrin & Aran’s older podcasts, so nice to just listen to them.

Also, as with the Challenges, i would say there’s no need to aim for 100% comprehension. Mine was fairly low to start with but it’s surprising how I’m improving as I carry on. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Morning - I hope this is the right place! And I might find someone who can answer a quick question.

This morning, as you do over breakfast, was watching “Abadas” and at the beginning Ben the narrator child opens his story book to find the characters and I can make out :

… ble maen nhw’n chwarae heddiw - “where are they playing today” , but at the start of the sentence something that sounds like “sgyw mi” or “skew me” with a more English flavour. I turned on subtitles and it says “I wonder” but I can’t translate that back to anything that sounds a match…

Can anyone suggest something I can look up?

Looking up “tybed” which also means “I wonder” in my Modern Welsh Dictionary reveals the suggested alternative of " 'sgwn i", which seems most likely.

Looking THAT up reveals it to be a Northern variant of “I wonder”.

I hope that helps :slight_smile:

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:slight_smile: dw I angen geiriadur newydd

Thank you so much. These welsh really are a tricky bunch! I can get back to work now! Productivity restored.
G.

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Yes, I’m fairly sure I read somewhere it’s short for ‘os gwn i’ - where the gwn I is an inflected version of gwybod (stem + an ending) …so literally it’s something like ‘if I know’…

Rich :slight_smile:

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