Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Hi I wonder if someone could clarify for me the use of roedd etc? SSIW seem to use it as a straight forward I was,doing something as in “Roedd hi’n gwneud hynny” meaning “She was doing that”. My confusion comes from this being translated as -“She used to do that” which I would think is “Roedd hi’n arfer gwneud hynny”?

Yeah, I think this is the difference between the perfect past and the imperfect past - whether or not the action started in the past, and the finished or started and continued.

I’m always getting it wrong, unfortunately my English grammar isn’t great anyway - and I can’t get the difference to stick in my head yn Gymraeg.


This is the imperfect from my grammar book

So the imperfect looks like this:

Roedd hi’n canu (she used to sing)

But the perfect is

Mae hi wedi canu (she has sung)

Joyojoy. I hate grammar.

Hi, I had a quick question… Can anyone explain the differences between ‘ble’, ‘lle’, and ‘le’?
I’m a little confused!! (I’m doing the a northern course).
Thanks!

Just reporting back quickly. Comments to my question on the Sabre-Roads forum pointed out that signs can be fine tuned by hand, so the grave accent was probably a mistake.

Occasionally used in English to indicate which syllable (if not the ultimate) takes the stress, but I don’t think in Welsh for that purpose or on a sign.

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Hi Esther - we are talking about that here but if you are studying Northern then you probably will only use lle.

Le sounds like a mutation - ‘ei le hi’ perhaps?

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Thanks your information helped me find an Wikipedia entry for the imperfect which explained things in a way my brain could digest! It’s the English grammar that had flummoxed me.

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Hi, I’ll try to explain as well as I can
Ble = where in the South ( like;" Where is the cat ?" or " I want to know where the cat is"
Lle = the same in the North
Lle = in North and South the word for “place”
le = the mutation of lle, so “where do you come from” would be
in the South : o ble wyt ti’n dod
in the North : o le wyt ti’n dod

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No difference in meaning for where. Lle is very common in the north, le is pretty common in the south, and ble is the sort of ‘standardised’ version that’s promoted - pick which you like, I would always use lle for preference.

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Thanks everyone for the quick and very clear answers! I’ve been wondering about this one for a couple of days, and then suddenly thought, I should ask on the forum… clearly the right choice!! You guys are :+1:t3:!
Diolch!

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Another niggle, is there any difference in the use of “eisios” and “yn barod” for already?

I think (willing to be corrected!) it just comes down to where they’re used in the sentence e.g.
Dwi eisios wedi neud hynny
Dwi wedi neud hynny’n barod

but at the moment I don’t have @garethrking’s excellent grammar book with me to check further ;-).

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Well, I don’t own the grammar book (yet), but the brilliant “Modern Welsh Dictionary” also confirms that yn barod always follows the phrase it refers to.

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My take on this is that while ““Roedd hi’n gwneud hynny” can be translated as "“She used to do that”, ““Roedd hi’n arfer gwneud hynny”” is a bit more explicit about the “used to” bit. (i.e. the “arfer”).

It’s one of those where they can’t always swap - so if it’s after the phrase, it can be eisoes or yn barod, if it’s before, it’ll have to be eisoes. :slight_smile: So what @Hendrik said… :wink:

If we’ve got a phrase where the English is ‘She used to do that’ and then the Welsh is ‘Roedd hi’n gwneud hynny’, that’s a slip up on our part - sorry!

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Eisoes is a bit more formal/literary in feel, I would say. Other than that, the only difference is position, as @siaronjames has pointed out above.

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Diolch pawb that is great is great thanks. I sort of felt there was something. Sort of an itch.

There are Welsh placenames for every inch of Wales btw (although its not well advertised)…and many of the places which once spoke Welsh (Southern Scotland to Southern England have older Welsh names)

Learnt about this during post-colonialism studies in the Britain and Ireland module :slight_smile:

In English medium school in Wales this was never covered sadly … but I think its worth covering at least briefly to get a sense of where you live

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arfer / arferion = custom / customs (or tradition/s)

yn arfer - customarily / used to

She was customarily doing that … but “used to” is quicker

To all those who’ve been discussing Lamphey/Llandyfái, I finally got around to checking the fairly definitive “Dictionary of the Place-names of Wales” by Hywel Wyn Owen and Richard Morgan, and this is what the entry there says:

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