Yep ... just 'ty.
Whatever was in front of it has gone.
Cripes.
So what's that then ... well, it's a common trick Welsh speakers and authors play on us poor saps (sorry, eager , much valued students) learning Welsh. I've christened it the "frontal apostrophe." In English it's the equivalent of turning wheelbarrow into 'arrow or perhaps hyperventilation into 'on. Or "trump" into 'rump.
It's a 'it of a 'ugger 'ually.
How can you make use of the "back end" of the word to find the whole thing ?
Suppose you had a list of all the words that ended in -ty.
That would be handy. ( or ... that 'ld be 'dy.)
But there isn't one.
But there is a potential way around it.
And I've invented it.
You'll need to start thinking now.
One thing that would help would be a "reverse Welsh dictionary .... which is what that strange-looking list was that I showed you a bit ago ...here it is again... it's Welsh words written in reverse and put into dictionary order ... just the "y" ones for now.
.... well, the ones I've found so far.......
yd
ydlodda
ydnaira
ydrada
ydrobal
ydrotsy
ydrudom
yf
yh
yhr
ylewg
ynnyh
ynyf
ys
ytell
ytpop
ytsewg
ytybsy
ŷt
ywc
ywda
ywdafas
ywdalyd
ywffas
ywh
ywm
ywp
ywrt
What I've done is, just to remind you, is .. I've found Welsh words ending in -y and written them in reverse and dictionarificated them...... now lets go back to our mystery word '.
..it ended in ty ... that's all you've got.
Write it in reverse ..... yt ... and we've got the first two letter of the word we want IN REVERSE ! and we've got 4 candidate words which could finish up as 'ty right there in the list . In the "normal" dictionary we'd have a devil of a job finding them ...they'd be all over the place... but now we've done it in moments.
ytell = llety = lodging
ytpop = popty = oven
ytsewg = gwesty = inn, hotel
ytybsy = ysbyty = hospital
And you can then see if any of those fit the context in which your mysterious 'ty is embedded.
There one slight thing here ... there's rather a lot of Welsh words ending in -ty .
If I worked at it I could find lots of them. I could do it. Eventually.
But there must be a database of Welsh words, and there must be a simple way of reversing them, putting them in dictionary order and putting the list online.
Let's do another one.... what if you've got 'rdy as your "mystery remnants !
Write what you've got in reverse .... ydr .... then look it up ! In "the list" up there ...
Well , there's three candidate words .....
ydrobal which is labordy a laboratory
ydrotsy which is ystordy a warehouse/storeroom
ydrudom which is modurdy a garage ( motor-house !)
.. and again, you look to see if any of those fit in with the sentence.
So .. if that "reverse" data base/book existed, it would work a lot of the time.
There are a few other tricky things.
You get suffixes like -a ( an intensifier) ... so you'd sometimes have to remove them.
You've got verb endings .. you'd need to find the "stem" .. and there's a hell of a lot of Welsh verbs with the same stem.
But it should work fine with nouns .... as long as you know how to recognise and remove the plural endings. Eek. Life's never easy you know.
Music later ... parrot tired now.