Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

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Llawygath
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-09, 15:03

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Beth yw eu henwau nhw?
"No matches."

On any of the words? Really?
Nack? I only looked up henwau. I know the others.

linguoboy wrote:(Much as I like to bag on Google Translate, it gets this sentence correct.)
Does it.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-10-09, 15:12

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Beth yw eu henwau nhw?
"No matches."

On any of the words? Really?
Nack? I only looked up henwau. I know the others.

You know henwau, too. It's just the plural of enw. Eu prefixes h to vowel-initial words.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-10-09, 15:14

Llawygath wrote:If this is actually in use, it's probably calqued on English and perhaps therefore not standard.


It's in use and standard. It depends on the individual which works.

These things also look as if one language calqued on the other.


Surprised? Again, entirely standard. Come on, Welsh-English bilingualism has been present for hundreds of years, what do you expect?

c) The pronoun (f)i is always shown attached to the verb in front of it, like so:
Dwi'n dy garu, 'nghariad.
(Yes, that's from a different book entirely, but whatever.)
Is this acceptable or standard? My feeling is that it's not, but someone else might know better.


Disputable. This is probably by far the most acceptable of a range of similar spellings by natives (you often see things like dachi, mo'n, etc). Some people will turn their noses up at it, perhaps, but you see it a lot.

d) I never learned "I'm sorry" before receiving the phrasebook, and it gives that as being Mae'n ddrwg 'da fi. Is this true?


Mae'n ddrwg 'da fi, mae'n flin 'da fi... there are lots of local variations. Most people, in my experience, say 'sorri' most of the time and reserve these expressions for more profound apologies.

e) Is it plis or os gwelwch yn dda?


Either.

2) Is there a general rule for pronouncing words with funny consonant clusters at the ends of them (e.g., perygl, sicr, posibl, aml, llyfr, siwgr, basn)? If so, what is it?


As far as I know all dialects have some kind of epenthetic vowel they insert to make it pronouncable. Some southern dialects have [i], I have [ə] (there are probably other variations - [a] is one found in parts of the northwest). In some cases, the cluster is simplified ('posib' is a common pronunciation of 'posibl', and I'm pretty sure I've heard 'peryg' too.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-10-09, 15:30

YngNghymru wrote:As far as I know all dialects have some kind of epenthetic vowel they insert to make it pronouncable. Some southern dialects have [i], I have [ə] (there are probably other variations - [a] is one found in parts of the northwest). In some cases, the cluster is simplified ('posib' is a common pronunciation of 'posibl', and I'm pretty sure I've heard 'peryg' too.

Some sources I have say the vowel tends to "echo" the stressed vowel in the word (allowing for the NW tendency towards /e/ > /a/ in unstressed final syllables). Thus, pobl > pobol but aml to amal. Have you noticed anything like this?
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-09, 19:27

YngNghymru wrote:
Llawygath wrote:If this is actually in use, it's probably calqued on English and perhaps therefore not standard.


It's in use and standard. It depends on the individual which works.
Do you mean "the individual speaker"? I don't understand what you're trying to say exactly.

YngNghymru wrote:
These things also look as if one language calqued on the other.


Surprised? Again, entirely standard. Come on, Welsh-English bilingualism has been present for hundreds of years, what do you expect?
No, I'm not surprised. I was just wanting to verify.

YngNghymru wrote:
c) The pronoun (f)i is always shown attached to the verb in front of it, like so:
Dwi'n dy garu, 'nghariad.
(Yes, that's from a different book entirely, but whatever.)
Is this acceptable or standard? My feeling is that it's not, but someone else might know better.


Disputable. This is probably by far the most acceptable of a range of similar spellings by natives (you often see things like dachi, mo'n, etc). Some people will turn their noses up at it, perhaps, but you see it a lot.
So it's sort of acceptable...?

YngNghymru wrote:
d) I never learned "I'm sorry" before receiving the phrasebook, and it gives that as being Mae'n ddrwg 'da fi. Is this true?


Mae'n ddrwg 'da fi, mae'n flin 'da fi... there are lots of local variations. Most people, in my experience, say 'sorri' most of the time and reserve these expressions for more profound apologies.
So linguoboy was making profound apologies to me earlier for his typos and whatnot?

YngNghymru wrote:
e) Is it plis or os gwelwch yn dda?


Either.
Fine. (I'm sorry I left off the roof on the 'i' there -- I was in a bit of a hurry.) I don't see what os gwelwch yn dda translates to, though.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-10-09, 19:36

Llawygath wrote:I don't see what os gwelwch yn dda translates to, though.

Does it help to know that gwelwch is the synthetic present (i.e. future) tense of gweld?
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-09, 19:43

linguoboy wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:As far as I know all dialects have some kind of epenthetic vowel they insert to make it pronouncable. Some southern dialects have [i], I have [ə] (there are probably other variations - [a] is one found in parts of the northwest). In some cases, the cluster is simplified ('posib' is a common pronunciation of 'posibl', and I'm pretty sure I've heard 'peryg' too.

Some sources I have say the vowel tends to "echo" the stressed vowel in the word (allowing for the NW tendency towards /e/ > /a/ in unstressed final syllables). Thus, pobl > pobol but aml to amal. Have you noticed anything like this?
What linguoboy says above is the rule in Brithenig, so I originally assumed this was the case in Welsh as well. (In fact, Welsh with Ease actually spells it pobol.) However, I'm not fully sure how closely Brithenig is based on Welsh in this respect; for example, I know that (in Brithenig) the epenthetic vowel is unstressed and reduced, resulting in such words being exceptions to the normal stress/reduction pattern because their stressed, unreduced vowels are phonetically on the penultimate syllable whereas in other words this vowel is contained in the ultima. The stress/reduction pattern in Welsh has the unreduced vowel in the ultima and the stress normally on the penultima but sometimes on the ultima, but I don't know how this changes or not when you have an unpronounceable consonant cluster at the end of a word.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-09, 19:48

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I don't see what os gwelwch yn dda translates to, though.

Does it help to know that gwelwch is the synthetic present (i.e. future) tense of gweld?
Yes. So then "if you will see well"? How does that work?

I forgot -- there was something else I wanted to straighten out. Is there consonant gemination, either phonetic or phonemic? My impression was that /n/ was [n:] intervocalically, but I may be wrong.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-10-09, 19:58

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I don't see what os gwelwch yn dda translates to, though.

Does it help to know that gwelwch is the synthetic present (i.e. future) tense of gweld?
Yes. So then "if you will see well"? How does that work?

How does "please" work? Polite expressions like these are unanalysable idioms.

Llawygath wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I forgot -- there was something else I wanted to straighten out. Is there consonant gemination, either phonetic or phonemic? My impression was that /n/ was [n:] intervocalically, but I may be wrong.

According to this scholarly article [PDF], final nasals are "often geminates". I can't say as I've noticed this myself, but then I'm probably not very attuned to this sort of subphonemic feature.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-09, 23:12

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I don't see what os gwelwch yn dda translates to, though.

Does it help to know that gwelwch is the synthetic present (i.e. future) tense of gweld?
Yes. So then "if you will see well"? How does that work?

How does "please" work? Polite expressions like these are unanalysable idioms.
True, but two of the other expressions for "please" I'm familiar with (s'il vous/te plaît and por favor) are rather more transparent to me than os gwelwch yn dda. (In fact, of the five languages I know bits of, three of them have totally opaque expressions for "please", so go figure.)
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I forgot -- there was something else I wanted to straighten out. Is there consonant gemination, either phonetic or phonemic? My impression was that /n/ was [n:] intervocalically, but I may be wrong.

According to this scholarly article [PDF], final nasals are "often geminates". I can't say as I've noticed this myself, but then I'm probably not very attuned to this sort of subphonemic feature.
"Scholarly" is right -- I had a hard time wading through it because it was up over my head. Mae'n ddrwg 'da fi. In any case, it seems that final nasals and final voiceless stops tend to be geminated because the original versions of those got lenited and so don't exist in that form, or something a little like that. There's also some sort of business with interdependent consonant and vowel length where vowels before long consonants are short and vice versa, and this may have something to do with historical sound changes too, or maybe not. It doesn't sound like you run into any geminated anythings other than nasals when you're in the middle of a word, though.
I originally thought that /n/ was geminated intervocalically because of what I read in this article. Maybe not the best source of information here, though.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-09, 23:46

Now to answer this question:
linguoboy wrote:Beth yw eu henwau nhw?
Foo-Foo, Penny a Cassie.

Oes cath 'da ti?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-10-10, 0:11

Llawygath wrote:Oes cath 'da ti?

Oes. Dim ond un gath.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-10, 3:35

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:Oes cath 'da ti?

Oes. Dim ond un gath.
Beth yw ei enw hi? (And how do you talk about, say, male cats or female dogs? Do all cats have to be "hi" and all dogs "e/o", or what? As well, when do you use the funny thing when there's a possessive pronoun before the noun and a regular one after?)

[tries to remember how to say time] Mae'n dau ar hugain a ... no, I'm too lazy to remember what in the world "thirty-two" is when you're telling the o'clock. Bother. I'll do it tomorrow. Rhaid i mi godi'n gynnar i fynd i'r ysgol yfory, felly dylwn i fod yn y gwely nawr.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-13, 1:22

I don't know what everyone else is doing, but for the past few days I've been busily slaving over a science project. In any case, let's see if we can conjugate a few prepositions (what fun!):
(ar)
arna i [on me]
arnat ti (?) [on thee]
arno fe (?) [on him]
arni hi [on her]
- [on us]
- [on you]
arnyn nhw [on them]

(am)
amdana i [for me]
amdanat ti [for thee]
amdano fe [for him]
amdani hi [for her]
- [for us]
- [for you]
amdanyn nhw (?) [for them]

I can't guess what the endings for ni and chi might be, but I think I have a fair idea of the others. Where I have a dash it means I can't think of anything plausible, and where there's a (?) it means that's a guess.
As well, I'd assume the 1s endings used to have 'f' on the end, but that got lost because we like to drop f's in here.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-10-14, 1:13

The formal endings are like, arnaf arnyt arno arni arnom arnoch arnynt (I forget exactly what, there are a bunch of different classes of endings in formal Welsh), the informal ones arna arnat arno arni arnon arnoch arnyn. am is incomprehensibly taught as 'for' most of the time - this is inaccurate. The only context when it means 'for' is 'in exchange for' - am beth prynest ti fo? Its most common meaning is 'about'.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-10-14, 15:31

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:Oes cath 'da ti?

Oes. Dim ond un gath.
Beth yw ei enw hi?

Does dim enw Cymreig 'da hi. Dŷn ni'n ei galw hi'n union "y Gath" ran amlaf.

Llawygath wrote:(And how do you talk about, say, male cats or female dogs? Do all cats have to be "hi" and all dogs "e/o", or what? As well, when do you use the funny thing when there's a possessive pronoun before the noun and a regular one after?)

It's much like English: a tomcat is a cath wryw ("male cat") and a female dog is a gast "bitch".

I'm not sure what the rules are for reinforced pronouns, but they're more common in speech than in writing. Often they are necessary for disambiguation: ei galw "her calling" sounds exactly like eu galw "their calling" unless you add hi and nhw respectively.

Llawygath wrote:[tries to remember how to say time] Mae'n dau ar hugain a ... no, I'm too lazy to remember what in the world "thirty-two" is when you're telling the o'clock.

You wouldn't express that way in Welsh anyhow. The equivalent of "two thirty-two" is actually "twenty-eight minutes to three".
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-10-15, 0:16

gwrcath or gwrgath is what I've always heard for tomcat.

The rules for reinforced pronouns as I understand them are basically this: they are unmarked when a new-ish person is being introduced or reintroduced into the discourse and marked otherwise. So:

Rho imi dy fag di
Rhois i fy magiau fi ar y llawr ac eistedd.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-15, 15:21

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:Beth yw ei enw hi?

Does dim enw Cymreig 'da hi.
:? Dydy 'Foo-Foo', 'Penny' a 'Cassie' dim yn Gymreig ychwaith. Dydw i ddim yn deall.
linguoboy wrote:Dŷn ni'n ei galw hi'n union "y Gath" ran amlaf.
Wait a minute. Are you saying that you call her "the Cat" most often because she doesn't have a Welsh name (?) or because she doesn't have a name at all?

linguoboy wrote:I'm not sure what the rules are for reinforced pronouns, but they're more common in speech than in writing. Often they are necessary for disambiguation: ei galw "her calling" sounds exactly like eu galw "their calling" unless you add hi and nhw respectively.
That makes sense.

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:[tries to remember how to say time] Mae'n dau ar hugain a ... no, I'm too lazy to remember what in the world "thirty-two" is when you're telling the o'clock.

You wouldn't express that way in Welsh anyhow. The equivalent of "two thirty-two" is actually "twenty-eight minutes to three".
Oh, okay.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-10-15, 16:19

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:Beth yw ei enw hi?

Does dim enw Cymreig 'da hi.
:? Dydy 'Foo-Foo', 'Penny' a 'Cassie' dim yn Gymreig ychwaith. Dydw i ddim yn deall.

Mae enw Gwyddelig, enw Almaenaidd, enw Siapaneaidd, ac ati gyda hi. Dylai bod enw Cymreig 'da hi hefyd, timod?

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Dŷn ni'n ei galw hi'n union "y Gath" ran amlaf.
Wait a minute. Are you saying that you call her "the Cat" most often because she doesn't have a Welsh name (?) or because she doesn't have a name at all?

Does dim ond un gath 'da ni, felly does dim angen go iawn enw iddi..
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-15, 20:51

YngNghymru wrote:The rules for reinforced pronouns as I understand them are basically this: they are unmarked when a new-ish person is being introduced or reintroduced into the discourse and marked otherwise. So:

Rho imi dy fag di
Rhois i fy magiau fi ar y llawr ac eistedd.
Somehow I'm not seeing what these sentences are supposed to demonstrate. :? I'm also having a hard time parsing the second -- it looks to be <give to my bags me on the floor and sit>. How to interpret that?
As well, is it i mi, i fi, ifi, imi, or all four depending on context, where you are or what mood you're in?


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