Level 2, challenge 10 question

At about 21 minutes there’s the line ‘they told us that they didn’t want to explain’. In the Welsh translation I can’t quite make out the bit around ‘that they didn’t’. It sounds a bit like ‘na yn nhw’n’. Can someone give me a proper translation?

Pretty close! That would be “nag ŷn nhw’n moyn” … so literally “not are they wanting (to explain)”. The “na” becomes “nag” before a vowel, which maybe tripped up your ear.

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Thanks. Bit confused by that one though. Which part of the sentence is the ‘didn’t want’? I thought na was like ‘that’.

the na(g) is the ‘didn’t’ and the moyn is the ‘want’. Quite a few words in Welsh have different meanings depending on where they are in the sentence or what the context is, and ‘na’ is one of them.

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Thanks. So are there any rules where you use na(g) instead of don i’n ddim yn moyn for example?

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You can go down a bit of a rabbit hole with that - best thing might be to use whichever comes to mind without worrying too much about it - you’ll be understood either way, and over time you’ll end up using the same patterns as the people you talk Welsh to most often… :slight_smile:

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It’s an extra option in Welsh versus English.

In English, as far as I can think of at the moment :roll_eyes:, you only have a positive ‘that’ which you have to follow with a negative phrase, when required, to say what you mean.

You can do this in Welsh too I.e. have a ‘that’ in the middle of a sentence and follow it by a phrase which has a ‘ddim’ in it, in a standard way.

The second option is to put your Welsh Shades on :sunglasses: , use ‘that not’ and use a positive statement instead.

You have to plan ahead to use this if you are translating ‘what you want to say in your head’ as by the time you’ve got to the negative bit in English in your head it’s too late for ‘that not’ :wink:

( Hoping I’m not down the rabbit hole but curious(er) as a result…,)

Rich :slight_smile: :rabbit: :rabbit2:

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