jeez, I came in here to ask one thing and ended up reading a month or two worth of replies. It’s interesting going through what other people have been asking about.
Someone showed me this earlier today and asked what it meant: https://i.gyazo.com/f77bfec75b67c7c767ee0de0d9c917a6.png
If you can’t see the picture, I typed it out.
“dy dy dei du di yn dy dŷ du di neu ydy dy dad di yn dy dŷ du di?”
I guess it’s meant to be one of those “can you believe how crazy this language can be??” kinds of things, but when I tried to translate it, all I could gather is… your black (I don’t know what dei means)… in your black house …or your dad in your black house? Is that close at all or is this entire thing just nonsense?
Not nonsense if you work out that “dei” has mutated from “tei” (tie, the thing some men wear around their necks) because it came after one of the many “dy” in the sentence.
Is your black tie in your black house or is your dad in your black house?
Ready to be shot down by anyone else who comes up with a better interpretation.
Oh diolch, Margaret, (why did the S4C quiz-mistress think your name was snobby?) I came across ‘dei’ the other day and was flummoxed, but not bothered enough to come on here and ask! So now, you are answering my queries before I have got around to making them!! (I don’t think your name is snobby, by the way!)
Quick one… dw i newydd (g?)orffen Challenge 13 yn y gwers 1 –
why is “tell me” = dweud wrtha fi but then “want me to” = eisiau i mi? that fi/mi thing feels very arbitrary. Am I missing a rule? The Modern Grammar book didn’t shed much light on the whole wrth thing either.
Probably easiest not to think of this as a fi/mi thing so much as a preposition thing, and you know how slippery those are… No, I don’t think there are any particularly useful ‘rules’ that you’re missing here…
Hi all. I’m up to the end of challenge 8 so just starting on the journey. Is there anywhere where the challenges or lessons content (or partial content, I know they’re quite long) is written down? It would be useful for a taking notes on the differences between certain words, and for asking questions here! Or are there any hints/tips for how to learn when I start moving on to the reading/writing bit? Thank-you in advance!
Oh, that does make more sense. I was even trying google translate and nothing came up for “dei” hah. I feel like mutations must make the life of an automated translator very difficult.
I want to lean all of these now oh my god. I didn’t even think to do a search for the whole sentence.
If you look on the lesson download page for any particular lesson, you ought to see a ‘vocab list’ link, which will give you a pop-up window with the material covered in that lesson - not the full script, because you’re not meant to get hung up on mastering the whole script, but should be enough to help a bit with questions etc…
Didn’t I do the whole i/mi/fi thing in the grammar? §122?
Well that’s just a matter of learning which prepositions go with which verbs…there isn’t much rhyme or reason to it. It’s exactly like leaners of English having to learn that it’s look AT but listen TO, isn’t it?
How do I express the idea of “getting at” idiomatically?
As in “I see what you are getting at”.
“I see what you mean” would cover it, but I was looking for a Welsh idiomatic way of expressing the English idiom “getting at” (if you see what I mean… ).
I think you need a mother-tongue speaker. We could all come with ideas, but they wouldn’t have any real validity! So maybe @CatrinLliarJones or @Iestyn or @garethrking might oblige? In which case, we would all be very grateful!
“Dw i’n gweld be sydd gen ti” is a common phrase to express the above. Literally translated as ‘I see what you have’. You will also hear people say…
“A, dw i’n gweld.” / ‘Ah, I see’
“Dw i deall beth sydd gen ti.” / ‘I understand what you have’
“Dw i efo chdi (rwan)” / ‘I’m with you (now)’
(I got a chance today to exchange a few words with a 90-year old gentleman who grew up speaking Welsh (but in a mixed-language family I believe), but who has spent most of his adult life outside Wales. He likes to keep up the language when he can, mostly via S4C, and on occasional visits to his home village. I must try to work this expression in next time I see him.
No, I don’t think there are any particularly useful ‘rules’ that you’re missing here…
