I've been reading " Rhagor o hanesion C'mon Midffild , and very interesting it is too ...and funny.
It's also a tricky read ..all the usual " let's keep the Welsh language to ourselves by making it impossible to read" tropes are there ... the contractions, the mis-spellings, the notorious "frontal apostrophe" or, as it's more commonly known " 'he 'ontal 'ostrophe " and also words that you just can't find in any dictionary known to mankind. ..what fun !
So ...here's a for instance, (for instance) ... a few times I've come across the top Welsh word "washi."
Yes, washi.
No, me neither.
But here's your evidence, your corpus, your body of knowledge, in all its glory ..
Exhibit [a] " Dyna ti, washi "
Exhibit [b] "Gwranda washi . . . !"
Exhibit [c] " Am be, washi ?"
There we are ... the facts are before us.
Some key points stare us in the face..
They're all very short utterances.
They're all speech.
One of them is a question.
Whether the 3 dots in Exhibit [b] are important I'm not sure ....
I've tried all the tricks in my massive and famous list of all the things you can try when you can't find a Welsh word in your dictionary, and I'm still none the wiser.
Some of my readers might remember all the shenanigins we had with the word "yli" ... if I can find it I'll put a link in .... here it is ... it's oddly named but it makes sense when you read it ... I think ...
everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-one-direction-and-chvrches.html
...when I actually twigged what it meant purely by thinking out of the box. Ond .. ble mae'r bocs nawr ?
What I haven't done yet is trying google translate.
Tell you what, I'll do it now .... in go the three bits of evidence ... live, in real time, before your very eyes .. dyna ni ...
Exhibit [a] " Dyna ti, washi " = That's right, washi
Exhibit [b] "Gwranda washi . . !" = Listen washi. . !
Exhibit [c] " Am be, washi ?" = For what, washi?
I rather guessed that was going to happen.
So now there's two lines to follow ..
[1] What could it mean ... friend, fishface, big-ears, now, Reginald, me old mate ...
[2] Is it a mangled version of a proper Welsh word ? And if so, what ?
[3] Is it some very odd bit of Wenglish ?
[4] Is it some regional usage, confined to villages within 5 miles of Flint Castle and only used on even-dated Thursday afternoons ? But not by left-handed people, or anyone who has ever been to Madagascar. Obviously.
A N T E R L I W T
Yes, that was an anterliwt allowing me to spend a bit of time waiting for a flash of inspiration, a sort of "out-of-the-box" moment in which the time-space continuum rwaligned itself in such a way as to make me suddenly "get" it.
But so far, it hasn't. Hey-ho ..so let's have a bit of music...... it's er Nid Madagascar and " Byr" ... It's played on one of those new-fangled Single-Sizers you know.......
Could this have been transmogrificated into " washi" perhaps by some drunk in 1863 or something ? That's all I've been able to come up with.