Use of ydy?

It is fine for non scientists but it is a pain having to sort out equivalences in scientifuc papers! But then, in ordinary life, i was one of four girls, three chemists and a mathematician with significant others : physicist, mathematician, engineer and chemist who, when the oven didn’t seem to be working right in 1962-3, looked at each other and gasped “Do you think it could be in Fahrenheit?”

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Do Welshmen have smaller feet than Englishmen, then? And if it’s true what they say about the size of your feet…

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There may be some truth in this - the Welsh mile disappeared with the arrival of Edward Longshanks - also known as the hammer of the Scots.

Apparently we got the units from the King of Cornwall - with the great name Dyfnwal Moelmud or Dyfnwal “the bald and silent”.

Murky waters indeed, into which I have rarely ventured… :slight_smile:

On reflection, I think I hear it without more than with - which may well be affected by time spent with children - and for some reason, with sounds faintly sloppy. Hmmmm.

But the good news is that while you were distracted by that, I finished the mojito… :slight_smile:

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Felly neb biau’r mojito bellach… :wink:

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I tend to us the SI accepted symbol “h” for hours in reports, but revert to “hr” when invoicing, in case the money-type people get confused and don’t pay us.

"y maent was coming to mind when i saw this " and that comment took me all the way back to primary school … the whole class chanting …
Yr wyf i
Yr wyt ti
Y mae ef
Y mae hi
Yr ydyn ni
Yr ydych chwi
Y maent hwy

But that’s my memory and I may have got it all wrong …

Wow. May have helped with learning hymns, but would have been useless speaking to the Welsh-speaking kids down the road.

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You’ve got it right, but it’s VERY literary/formal - as @robbruce correctly observes, most of those (particularly y maent hwy!) would be useless in normal conversation. :slight_smile:

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But that’s the way language was taught in the 1950s. I even have a Teach Yourself Welsh book from the 60s that uses these declensions. And you’re right … it was very confusing speaking to others and at home. That’s why the SSI philosophy of language acquisition is so good … no grammar, no translation just learning patterns … natural acquisition. I think in the 1950s linguistics hadn’t come up with the idea of pivot grammar yet.

The Teach Yourself Welsh book is interesting as they later published Living Welsh which had the forms Rydw i, etc … and Rydych chi for both singular and plural; Y maent hwy then became Nhw.

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That fits with me being actively discouraged from ever saying ‘ti’!. Theory… learner unlikely to be talking to anyone younger than self, so politeness rules!! So then I start SSiW in my 70s and…er… ??? Lots of learning of ‘ti’ needed! I knew all sorts, but all the 'you’s ’ were ‘chi’!!! I learned ‘dere’ very recently for ‘dewch’! Is there a ‘ti’ form of ‘diolch’?

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Yes indeed - and so have I. :slight_smile:

Only as “diolch i ti” (and of course “diolch i chi” is the formal/plural).
There is a ti form of ‘please’ though - “os gwelwch yn dda” is the form generally taught in books, but “os gweli di’n dda” is the ti form and is widely used.

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Only: “Ta”. Sorry, just my attempt at humour :grin:
I’m guessing that the “ch” ending of diolch is different from the normal formal "wch"s. so not affected.

“Only as “diolch i ti” (and of course “diolch i chi” is the formal/plural).”

No … this can’t be right surely. the ‘ch’ in ‘diolch’ is the ‘chi’ part as in Caewch … ‘you close’ … ‘eisteddwch’ … ‘you sit’ … a ‘ti’ form of ‘diolch’ would be ‘diolt’ … ‘???’

I like the way you’re thinking but, no, not in this case.

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No, as John and Gruntius said, not in this case. Diolch just happens to end in ch - the ch does definitely not relate to a ‘chi’ part.

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