Bod etc. Oedd/bues i?

Indeed, and this is the argument I use when I hear people claim that “the American accent is closer to Saxon English than modern English is”!

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Yes, also some words like gotten. That have only survived in some dialects of English. Fairly mainstream up north though. Also, by the way, I have frequented Ellwood on my work travels. Its a nice place.

Sorry, forgot to mention, when I worked in Ely, Cambs, someone borrowed a brush from me to spread some peat on the quayside. It was for a Donald Sulivan film about Philadelphia. Apparently Ely is more like Philadephia than Philadelphia now. I hope I spelt it correctly ( three times).

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Just out of interest, This is something that popped up on an English site today: (as usual, ignore the adverts)

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I have a chat buddy and we Skype several times a week to practice our Welsh. She lives in Scotland but is American, hailing from Arizona. I can barely hear her accent when we speak in English but I can hear it when we speak Welsh. Isn’t it all ever so fascinating? :wink:

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I would call it the Preterite (one of the past tenses). You have the Perfect tense (containing has/have - I have walked: Dw i wedi cerdded) and you have the Imoerfect tense (containing an ‘ing’ word : I was walking: Ron i’n cerdded) and you have the Preterite no frills past tense describing something that has occurred and is finished : I walked - cerddais (i) / cerddes (i) . Bues i is from the verb “to be” and just means I was E.g. I was at home - bues i gartref. I was there - bues i yno. There is more to the explanation of the Preterite especially using the verb to be Bod, but maybe that’s for another time.

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That’s a really clear way of explaining the basics - wish I’d thought of explaining it that way! :smiley:

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Ah…apparently I am familiar with them, although this particular song I first heard sung by an Australian comedian.