Level 2 lesson 1

Hi, can anyone tell me what the ‘ai’ in ‘ai eich plant chi ydy rheina’ means.
Diolch

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It’s one of those things that doesn’t translate word for word into English - the ai is there because you are asking a question.

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Diolch yn fawr

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Hi Siaron, sorry to bother you again but is the ‘ai’ short for anything? diolch, Mandy

No, it’s just ai.
It’s kind of a verbal question mark that is used when the sentence doesn’t start with a verb:
With a verb - ‘ydy rheina eich plant chi?’ = Are those your children?
Without a verb - ‘ai eich plant chi ydy rheina?’ = Are those your children?

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Diolch yn fawr iawn. Really helpful

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I’m very happy with the course so far; but I wish they’d mentioned that the form with the verb was also an option, because I answered exactly that based on what I learned in level 1 (old and new courses) and thought I’d got it wrong.

I was left wondering why, hence my forum search that found this thread.

I must say that the answer was far more fascinating than I expected! If I understand your explanation correctly, in Welsh you can signal a y/n question EITHER by moving the verb to that position (as with the verbs of many European languages or auxilliaries in English) OR use a question particle as in Chinese.

That’s really quite pretty!

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It wouldn’t be fair to pile all the options on too early! :wink:
In SSiW, as you progress through the levels you’re introduced to different ways of saying the same thing and more of the subtleties :slight_smile:

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Oh, it can go either way? Like @martin-harte, I phrased it with “ydy” at the beginning the first time and I’ve never understood since then why that wasn’t right. I eventually shrugged and accepted that this was just different for some reason. It’s useful to know it can be used in both ways.