>In my view, all English-Welsh dictionaries are outrageously bad >(forgive me this invective, but I can't help it. None of all those >lexicographers ever seems to have thought of the fact that languages >do not only consist of words, but also have a lot of phrases, >idiomatic expressions etc. None of these dictionaries takes that into >account. I'm trying to expand the lexicons that go with my course to do exactly this. >I once wanted to say "It was a strange situation". What I did say was >"sefyllfa ddieithr", which might be translated to English as "a >foreign situation" (don't ask me what that is, it does not make >sense). I remember once wanting to say that a tune was familiar to me. Looking in the Geiradur, I settled on the word 'cynefinol' for 'familiar', thus telling everyone two things: (1) "The tune was habitual to me" and (2) I was a learner with a dictionary. (To make matters worse, I got a description in Welsh trying to describe what 'cynefinol' really meant in terms of 'cynefin'...) Anyway, my current algorithm for writing in Welsh when I come across a word I'm not sure how to translate is this: 1. Try to think of the closest Welsh word I can think of. Sometimes I know "it's something like x" or "the stem is probably y". My rule is that if you find it in the Welsh side of the dictionary, it's fair game, even if you had to scan a short section of the dictionary to find the exact word. The principle behind this rule is that if you knew the root well enough to be able to find what you were looking for on the Welsh side and you were happy with that root from your previous experience in the language, it's probably pretty close to representing what you wanted to say. 2. Look up the word on the English side. Look for a Welsh definition that you already know and that means what you want it to mean. If so, use it. 3. If the English word you are looking for is completely unambiguous (like 'abbot') with no potential for shades of meaning, use the word you find in the dictionary, even if it is new to you. 4. Paraphrase the sentence to avoid the problem. 5. If, for some reason, you cannot paraphrase and absolutely _must_ translate the word, then take all the Welsh meanings and look them up one-by-one on the Welsh side of the dictionary. Often this process will help you eliminate the ones that don't fit. My Collins-Spurrell gives dieithr: strange, alien, foreign (dieithriad: stranger) rhyfedd: strange, queer, wonderful In particular, the meaning of 'dieithriad' should cue you into the fact that 'dyn dieithr' would be a 'strange person', i.e., one you don't know. 6. If you still cannot settle on which Welsh word to use, punt and put in the English word. You can compromise by giving it a Welsh spelling: Roedd hi'n syfyllfa stre+nj. Some Cymry Cymraeg will hate you for this, but at least you'll get across what you want to say. --Mark