Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-10-31, 0:26

It should be cathod Cymru.

Fflŵorin is /flu.ˈɔr.ɪn/. The stress is still on the second-to-last syllable (as is usual), the circumflex here indicates that the <w> is a long vowel and that there's a hiatus between this and the next vowel. The acute accent can be used to mark irregular stress/hiatus: casáu is /kas.ˈa.ɨ/ - still penultimate syllable stressed.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-31, 2:26

YngNghymru wrote:It should be cathod Cymru.
Okay, that makes much more sense. linguoboy and I were having this discussion over at Omniglot:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:Edit: I've already mentioned that the pre-French Influx cats didn't speak "proper" Welsh. Their dialect, or whatever you call it, is known as "the cats' Welsh" or "cymraeg y gathod". (Google Translate doesn't agree -- it thinks it should be "y 'cathod Cymru" -- but at least to me that reads as "the cats' Wales". I don't know Welsh, so I'm sure I've mangled it here.)


Y cathod Cymru would be "the cats of Wales". Cymraeg y cathod is "the Welsh of the cats" or "the cats' Welsh". (In Welsh, possession is shown by putting the possessor after the thing possessed.)

The topic was a conlang of mine, but the point is that the phrase y cathod Cymru was presented to me as correct. I only realized there were issues with it later, after I'd learned that definite articles weren't allowed before possessions.
YngNghymru wrote:Fflŵorin is /flu.ˈɔr.ɪn/. The stress is still on the second-to-last syllable (as is usual), the circumflex here indicates that the <w> is a long vowel and that there's a hiatus between this and the next vowel.
That's roughly what I thought would be the case, but I was having a hard time reconciling that with the "circumflex = stress" rule. Thanks.
YngNghymru wrote:The acute accent can be used to mark irregular stress/hiatus: casáu is /kas.ˈa.ɨ/ - still penultimate syllable stressed.
True. Say, why isn't it /ka.ˈsa.ɨ/? (And what does it mean, anyway? :P)

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-10-31, 12:30

Ble mae linguoboy? Dw i heb ei gweld hi am chwe dydd.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-03, 19:17

Okay, we need to know -- how do you distinguish between <there's a cat with me> and <there's a cat with me but she's not mine>? I mean, if you just say Mae cath 'da fi, that could mean either "I have a cat" or "There's a cat with me [but she may or may not be mine]", or at least so it would seem. How do you express the simple notion of "There's a cat with me"? Do you have to add <but she's not mine> (or something similar) on the end, or what?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-11-04, 21:40

Is that really a distinction worth making? Context will disambiguate, I suppose - or you could say mae 'da fi gath yma or something.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-05, 3:05

YngNghymru wrote:Is that really a distinction worth making? Context will disambiguate, I suppose - or you could say mae 'da fi gath yma or something.
I guess you're right. I can't actually think of many instances when you'd need to express the idea that there was a cat with you that wasn't yours, or vice versa -- I was only thinking of a certain scene in a story I read in which someone was accompanied by a talking cat that belonged to no one. That kind of thing doesn't exactly come up much. :P

Shouldn't it be mae 'da fi y gath yma? I didn't think cath yma was a valid construction. Is it?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-11-05, 16:34

Llawygath wrote:Shouldn't it be mae 'da fi y gath yma? I didn't think cath yma was a valid construction. Is it?

First of all, the form taken by the article after fi would be 'r, not y.

Second, what's wrong with cath yma? That just means "a cat here" (as opposed to y gath yma which means "this cat"), e.g. Mae cath yma. Ydy'r gath 'ma'n eiddo i ti? "There's a cat here. Is this cat yours?"
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-05, 22:56

linguoboy wrote:Second, what's wrong with cath yma? That just means "a cat here" (as opposed to y gath yma which means "this cat"), e.g. Mae cath yma. Ydy'r gath 'ma'n eiddo i ti? "There's a cat here. Is this cat yours?"
Okay, I guess I was being stupid. I was trying to come up with a sensible interpretation of Yng's sentence, and I wasn't arriving at one. I guess something to the effect of "there's a cat here that's with me". This appears to be a rare example of a sentence that's more concise in Welsh than in English. :P

Have you read my earlier posts on page 6? I tried to ask you what name you used for your cat when you took her to the vet. Did I not succeed?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-11-06, 2:07

It's just 'I have a cat here' or 'there is a cat here with me', yes.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-07, 2:41

There was a nice little discussion taking place between linguoboy and me on the "Mae'r person o dana i" thread, but I thought I'd take it over here since it wasn't really on topic.
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
Mae'r person o dana' i'n hoffi casglu pethau.
:? Efallai. Dydw i ddim yn gwybod.

Fyddi di'n casglu pethau neu beidio?
I still haven't gotten anywhere with this one. <will you be collecting things or [no matches]> it is, and I can't piece that together into anything sensible. In particular, what's that last word? Y geiriadur mawr didn't find anything for beidio or peidio, so I'm pretty mystified.
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:Mae cath 'da'r person o dana i.

Ydy. "Bū-chan" yw ei henw.
There was actually more to this than the above quote, but it's not included here.
I'm confused over why it's ei henw and not ei enw. I can't see a plausible reason why we would have *eis > *eih > ei h- for "her"; I can understand *eus > *euh > eu h- for "their", but not the former sequence. I was under the impression that the plural ending in earlier stages of the language was *-s > *-h > (nothing), at least to some extent, so why would a singular possessive pronoun have ended in *-s? (I may be confusing Brithenig and Welsh sound changes here, but I'm pretty sure that Brithenig tracks Welsh exactly in this respect.) Maybe it makes sense that there would originally have been different possessive pronouns for "his" and "her", since ei does after all trigger different mutations depending on which one it is, but I don't see why anything singular has an *-s on the end. Can somebody straighten me out here? :?
I tried to ask what the pinyin was for linguoboy's cat's Chinese name, but I may not have succeeded. As well, beth yw ei chwe enw arall?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-13, 15:20

YngNghymru wrote:cael is 'to be allowed to'. People do use it in a more general sense of 'can', but prescriptively for that you want gallu.
Sure.
See, I don't know how to conjugate either of them, so I didn't even know which one I was using. :roll: I meant to use gallu. In that case, was I supposed to say Galla i ddim yn meddwl o dim byd i ddweud or something? Should I go ask a dictionary how to conjugate some verbs?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-11-13, 17:33

Llawygath wrote:See, I don't know how to conjugate either of them, so I didn't even know which one I was using. :roll: I meant to use gallu. In that case, was I supposed to say Galla i ddim yn meddwl o dim byd i ddweud or something? Should I go ask a dictionary how to conjugate some verbs?

You could do that. You can also find the conjugation of gallu (and cael) at this site: http://clwbmalucachu.co.uk/cmc/cheatsheets.htm.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-15, 15:37

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:See, I don't know how to conjugate either of them, so I didn't even know which one I was using. :roll: I meant to use gallu. In that case, was I supposed to say Galla i ddim yn meddwl o dim byd i ddweud or something? Should I go ask a dictionary how to conjugate some verbs?

You could do that. You can also find the conjugation of gallu (and cael) at this site: http://clwbmalucachu.co.uk/cmc/cheatsheets.htm.
Thanks for the link. I've heard of that website before, if only I could remember where...

I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-11-15, 15:51

Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?

Because gallu is not bod and doesn't make use of the same construction. So, no, it's Alla i ddim meddwl am (not o!) ddim byd i ddweud.

(Fedra i ddim works equally well here and would be preferred (a) in the North and (b) among those who still make the historical distinction between physical capability [expressed with gallu] and mental capacity/permission [medru].)
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-11-16, 11:21

There are only a few verbs that take yn for the purposes of attaching a verbnoun, and as far as I can think they're all copulaic verbs (i.e. verbs which can take as their 'object' nouns, adjectives, and prepositional phrases). In fact, I think bod may well be the only one... other verbs treat the verbnoun as their direct object.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-17, 22:09

I think I understand now...
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?

Because gallu is not bod and doesn't make use of the same construction. So, no, it's Alla i ddim meddwl am (not o!) ddim byd i ddweud.
Why isn't it o? (I know, dumb question.)
linguoboy wrote:(Fedra i ddim works equally well here and would be preferred (a) in the North and (b) among those who still make the historical distinction between physical capability [expressed with gallu] and mental capacity/permission [medru].)
Oh great, another dialectal difference thingy. It sounds like a fine distinction to make, but should I go making it? And what's the idea with having one verb that's used to mean 'mental capacity/permission' (eh?) and another that's used only for permission (yes, and lots of other stuff, but that's another story)? I feel like I missed something somewhere in there.
Hmm, I sound really obnoxious. :roll: I certainly don't want to come off that way. I'll try to tone it down.
I have a couple of other things I'd like to ask you guys, if you don't mind:
1) According to this, the conditional is formed using the stem bas-. However, one of linguoboy's sentences (+ Yng's correction), which involves a conditional, goes like this:
Fyddai'r gath ddim yn cysgu ar wely nad ydy'n gynnes!
In other words, the conditional verb here is fyddai, not fasai or whatever. Is this another N/S difference? It could be, since the table I got the bas- forms from looked to have been written by a Northerner. If yes, which should I use? In either case, how does the above conditional conjugation of bod go? (Feel free to point me to a website and say "please use this instead of taking my time!".)
2) How come 'booklet' is the singulative of 'book'? I only just found out now that llyfryn means 'booklet'; I used to think it just meant 'book', which led me to some pretty strange conclusions. Thankfully I've got that sorted out.
On a similar note, I've noticed several other words that seem to have a bare form, a singulative form and a plural form. Sometimes they follow the relatively intuitive idea that the singulative is little, the bare is medium-size and the plural is, you know, plural, but other times I can't see the logic.

- ffaglen (singulative; 'torch') ~ ffagl (bare; 'blaze, flame, torch, firebrand; brand') ~ ffaglau (plural of ffagl) [~ ffaglennau (plural of ffaglen)]
- cabetsen (singulative; 'cabbage') ~ cabetsh (bare; 'cabbage') ~ [no plural form]
- taten (singulative; 'potato') ~ [no bare form] ~ tatw/tatws/tato (plural of taten)

(In fact, it seems like there are just plain lots of words for 'torch' -- and I don't mean the flashlight kind.)

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-11-18, 1:22

-yn and -en are not only singulatives, they're also diminutives. Some words have a singular with a singulative ending or diminutive ending and a plural with a distinct plural ending. These are just things that have to be learnt.

Byddai and buasai and bâi mean different things in literary Welsh, but are used for the same thing (conditional and habitual past) in most dialects. My dialect makes a distinction between byse + related forms for conditional and bydde + related forms for habitual past and doesn't use bâi at all (in fact I'm not sure it's found in any spoken form). Basai is often considered to be stereotypically Northern but this is strange because it is very common in the South, too.

The forms are regular within their paradigm and have the endings -wn -et -ai -en -ech -en attached to the stem (e.g. baswn, byddwn, bawn).
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-19, 2:28

YngNghymru wrote:-yn and -en are not only singulatives, they're also diminutives.
That makes sense. That's kind of the conclusion I'd arrived at anyway, though not in such clear terms.
YngNghymru wrote:Some words have a singular with a singulative ending or diminutive ending and a plural with a distinct plural ending. These are just things that have to be learnt.
Sure.
YngNghymru wrote:Byddai and buasai and bâi mean different things in literary Welsh, but are used for the same thing (conditional and habitual past) in most dialects. My dialect makes a distinction between byse + related forms for conditional and bydde + related forms for habitual past and doesn't use bâi at all (in fact I'm not sure it's found in any spoken form). Basai is often considered to be stereotypically Northern but this is strange because it is very common in the South, too.

The forms are regular within their paradigm and have the endings -wn -et -ai -en -ech -en attached to the stem (e.g. baswn, byddwn, bawn).
I'm sorry, I don't quite see what you've just explained here. What are buasai, bâi, byse and bydde? Where exactly does the bit about habitual past come in?
More to the point of what I was wondering: does it work to have byddwn mean either '(I) would' or '(we) will' depending on context? I suppose it must, since the colloquial language isn't null-subject, but it still seems kind of funny to me.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-11-19, 16:58

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?

Because gallu is not bod and doesn't make use of the same construction. So, no, it's Alla i ddim meddwl am (not o!) ddim byd i ddweud.
Why isn't it o? (I know, dumb question.)

Because Welsh isn't English. Why is it à in French and not de?

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:(Fedra i ddim works equally well here and would be preferred (a) in the North and (b) among those who still make the historical distinction between physical capability [expressed with gallu] and mental capacity/permission [medru].)
Oh great, another dialectal difference thingy. It sounds like a fine distinction to make, but should I go making it?

You don't have to if you don't want to. No one will think of less of you, but I thought you might want to know why you sometimes see one and sometimes see the other.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-19, 21:35

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?

Because gallu is not bod and doesn't make use of the same construction. So, no, it's Alla i ddim meddwl am (not o!) ddim byd i ddweud.
Why isn't it o? (I know, dumb question.)

Because Welsh isn't English. Why is it à in French and not de?
Yes, of course. See, it really was a stupid question. :roll:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:(Fedra i ddim works equally well here and would be preferred (a) in the North and (b) among those who still make the historical distinction between physical capability [expressed with gallu] and mental capacity/permission [medru].)
Oh great, another dialectal difference thingy. It sounds like a fine distinction to make, but should I go making it?

You don't have to if you don't want to. No one will think of less of you, but I thought you might want to know why you sometimes see one and sometimes see the other.
Okay. Fine by me.


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