Questions about Level 3 South (any doubts and curiosities)

(Rightly or wrongly) I think of it as ‘what about’…we get something…

…an alternative/ variant…

3 Likes

Hi Gisella
your ears are excellent.
Awn ni gael rhywbeth… is more or less a literal translation from English to Welsh.
But the meaning of this sentence is better conveyed with : Beth am i ni gael…
I’m sure that the “beth am i ni …” was taught in a vocab lesson after the old course 1, I’m not sure if it was taught in the “normal” course.

4 Likes

Thanks @rich and @brigitte.

Looks like I’d better trust my ears, then? :grinning:
Well after all I’ve spent years trying to understand sounds of words in the songs, while only months trying to understand meanings and how the language works…so it makes sense.

By the way, I had a second question ready, because what I heard in Welsh didn’t match English. But then I realized I understand @Iestyn’s Welsh more than his English accent… :wink: :rofl:

3 Likes

Your expectation was right, I think.
“Beth am i ni gael…” is a direct translation of the English “What about us having …” which amounts to the same thing in effect as “Shall we get …” more or less :smile:

4 Likes

I can relate to this problem. I have just realised that I don’t use the word shall in my spoken English, except if I was reciting the ten commandments from the Bible or pretending to be very posh and so trying to translate shall into Welsh, means trying to first think about what I would actually say and then translating that into Welsh instead. In reality, I don’t need to translate shall at all, because I never use it anyway and I can just think and say what I would in Welsh, pretty much as I would in English.

Shall is an oddity as a word I think - it originally came from a word meaning “obligation” and then it evolved to cover lots of other meanings, such as expressing the future tense etc.

The past tense (or is that conditional?) of shall is should - there are no direct or general Welsh translations for either of those words. Should is a word I would use in everyday English, but only really in the sense of I must, I need to or I ought to, mae’n rhaid I fi, Mae eisiau i fi, Dw i’n gorfod etc. Should means a bit more in English, but I only use should in those senses of the word.

I think the word “shall” and also perhaps should are unique to Germanic languages and they have come to express lots of different things.

2 Likes

Ironically (also considering reflections I just posted here Published: new advanced content), “shall” is one of the first thing we are taught in English!
And I still remember we all struggled with it because we first learn it as the official future tense for I and we.
So we do hundreds of exercises to practice this, but after a while we learn the interrogative form as in this thread, and a bunch of other uses you mention, that’s all quite confusing to us learners.

Then when we finally figure it out, we speak to English natives and find out…nobody really uses it! :laughing:
(at least, for the future I never heard anyone - for other uses, just rarely)

2 Likes

I think many people do use shall a lot in English, but not where I grew up. It probably varies from dialect to dialect - if I was mocking a posh English accent or trying to mock a Stage actor then I would say - as in Cinderella “You shall go to the ball”, which to most people I know in normal speach would be something very different, perhaps like “you’ll definitely be going to that ball - don’t you worry about that”.

1 Like

Er…well…my lovelier half and I shall have to take note just how anachronistic we are…:neutral_face:

1 Like

:grinning:
You use shall for future tense instead of will? :open_mouth:

I’ve probably heard “shall we (…)?” relatively often, and I’m pretty sure I did use it pretty often too.
But I’m pretty sure even more often I heard/used other forms (like should, are we…).

I use “shall” as often as “will” and, as a Beaufort boy, I’m not particularly posh. :wink:

1 Like

I was brought up to use “I shall”, “we shall”, but “you/he/she/they will” for the normal future. “I will” means something like “I am determined to” and “You shall” is as @Toffidil says “You are definitely going to”.
In a despairing voice:
“I shall drown and nobody will save me.” :anguished:
In a determined voice:
“I will drown and nobody shall save me.” :angry:
It still seems more natural to say “I shall”, but I am old!
Sue

4 Likes

If it’s accepted in Beaufortese, I know I can use it, then! :wink:

@Betterlatethan, I remember we were told these differences at school - now I pay attention to it. Do you think it’s also a matter of UK-USA-other English speaking Countries?

Anyway In my English-from-songs repertoire I remember a couple of classics, at least: We shall overcome (that I never really liked, from a musical point of view), I shall not be moved and I shall be released. :smiley:

1 Like

Sorry, I really don’t know. My Dad (born Swansea) was a teacher, mainly of history but also of English and he insisted.
Sue

1 Like

That’s pretty much what I was taught. Most of the time, of course, we say (and now write) “I’ll”, “he’ll”. “you’ll” etc but we may have in our heads the appropriate form.
I do admit to a tendency to “shilly shally” over this, however. :laughing::smiling_imp:

3 Likes

“Beth am I ni”
Personally, I dont notice myself using shall too much. Although I it makes sense to me. Also I tend to (over) use “would”, “could” and “should” as future tense for can/may, rather than past tense. I suppose what I am saying is that English words tend to be used differently by different people. I have to be aware of this when writing e-mails.

With this in mind, and the fact that English and Welsh don’t match directly - I feel really comfortable with the SSiW taught: “Beth am I ni …” (how about, we …) for “shall/will/can/(whatever) we”.

3 Likes

In Old English there wasn’t really a separate future tense – much like the Literary Welsh present/non-past being used in spoken Welsh for the future. But you did have ic sceal (= I must, therefore I’m going to) and ic wille (= I want to, therefore I’m going to): in Middle and Modern English these therefore both get used to make future tenses.

As for the distinction between the two (apart from “I shall” just being less used in most modern dialects): I don’t know the history of it, so it is possible that it may be a survival into Modern English of the difference in meaning that these two verbs had in Old English – apparently the wedding vows were originally “will you take this man…? – I will,” because that form of words indicated that the union was entered into voluntarily (willingly), rather than under compulsion. However, it has the feel to me of some clever 18th-century grammarian-stylist choosing to create a distinction that reflected the etymology, rather than something organic.

At any rate, I have always understood the “I shall/you will” distinction to reside in the idea (conceit?) that it is rude to use ‘shall’ of people other than oneself, as the meaning ‘must’ implies that you’re telling other people what to do; whereas it is rude to use the word ‘will’ of oneself, as it implies that you get to do whatever you choose, rather than simply bowing to custom and circumstance and humbly doing merely what you must. Hence the polite/unmarked “I shall drown, and no-one will save me” versus the determined “I will drown, and no-one shall save me” (I want to, and you mustn’t stop me).

4 Likes

An interesting and authoritative explanation, thank you, What shade of meaning do you think William Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day”?

2 Likes

I honestly don’t know – I’m afraid I managed to swap from a science degree to one in Old English without ever going through the Middle/Early Modern English mill. My usual (disingenuous) disclaimer for anything that I don’t know, but probably should, is that if it’s larger than a cell or more modern than 1100 I haven’t studied it. I think William Shakespeare fails on both counts…

1 Like

science degree to one in Old English

I stuck with science but would have enjoyed Old English especially since my mother (Cymraes Cymraeg) went to Cardiff to study Old Norse and Old English. She chucked it in, though, to join the WAAF during the war. :smile:

I just remembered I had opened this for the purpose, so let’s use it!

Challenge 6 South, min 23:02
Yes, I had a glass or two of wine and then I went home - Do, gwes i gwydred neu ddau o win, ac wedyn es i getre
Is it written correctly or missing something?

I can’t find “then” in the vocabulary list, I found this on a dictionary but then

in Challenge 9, min 28:03, the famous… If you don’t make me a cup of coffee right now, then I will never love anyone ever again, I hear
Os na wnei di disgled o goffi i fi yn syth, yna fydda’i byth yn caru neb byth eto
Is this correct? What’s the difference between wedyn and yna? :thinking:

1 Like