Commendable attitude, Rich. Spot on!
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I have seen verbnouns mentioned a few times and I have asked myself if they can work like gerunds in English, and I figure now is as good a time as any to ask! 
I’m still not quite clear on that point @garethrking - and in fact, I really have no idea what a verbnoun even is… other than the obvious reference… but I don’t know how to explain or apply it. Diolch yn fawr!
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Yes Sasha - a verbnoun is indeed the same thing as the English gerund, that is to say: a noun expressing the action of the verb.
And its use in the two languages is pretty similar. Indeed, the characteristic English continuous tenses (I am going, etc) are plainly modelled on Celtic, i.e. [verb to be] + [gerund/VN], with the small added detail of a linking yn in Welsh. And like the gerund, the VN can be used as an actual noun:
Gall gyrru’n rhy gyflym fod yn beryglus
Driving too fast can be dangerous
All good fun. 
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When I try to think of challenging new sentences from scratch, I often get stuck.
I was wondering how to say not to.
I know that how to say is sut i ddweud. (I also remember that in other sentences like dw i’n moyn dweud there’s no i, but not sure of why, so I’m assuming I need one here) :
He goes into the other room to hear what they want - Mae’n mynd/Ma fe’n mynd mewn i’r ystafell arall i clywed beth maen nhw’n moyn.
In SSiW all the examples with not to start with I’d rather (Well da fi beidio).
But I guess beidio is what I need here, so I’m going to try like this:
He goes into the other room not to hear the noise - Mae’n mynd mewn i’r ystafell arall, i beidio clywed y swn.
Or with different vocabulary and things I might mess up, so I can get more corrections in the process 
He thought of leaving his shoes outside, not to suffer the complaining about - Meddyliodd e am gadael ei esgidiau tu allan, i beidio diodde ei achwyn ar -
p.s. they sound awful in English but I’m actually starting from Italian then mix it with recycled parts from Welsh sentences, and this is what I get! 
Awesome! Thank you so much for clarifying that for me and giving examples! Diolch yn fawr iawn! 
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I’m slightly confused in Level 2 Challenge 22.
In the written vocabulary list it says, .‘He didn’t tell me’ is ’ wnaeth e ddim dweud wrtha i. and you didn’t tell me is wnest ti ddim dweud wrtha i
In the examples of sentences it is ‘Ddwedodd e ddim wrtha i’, and Dwedest ti ddim wrth i
and that is what Iestyn and Cat appear to be saying…
Can it be either?
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Hi @bizzielizzie,
Ok - it’s possible it’s one way in the notes and the other in the conversation - I’m not sure but either version means the same thing - they are interchangeable.
One of the things that SSIW tries to do is give you experience of the different ways people might say the same thing. You might have a preference in terms of the way you like to say it but for understanding others it’s really useful to know what the options are.
This is an example where ‘wnaeth e’ which means ‘he did’ ( past tense of gwneud, to do) is used to give you a past tense…and this is quite a nifty technique as you can just tack your standard verb onto it eg dweud…wrtha i, and it gives you the past tense of it. Literally ‘he did’ say - or tell in this case, taking the ‘wrth’ into account.
Dwedodd skips the ‘he did’ aspect and puts the past tense directly onto the verb, making it ‘he said’ or ‘he told’ in the context of the ‘wrtha i’ / told me. From a learners point of view you need to know the verb stem - how to shorten the verb, to use this option - dwed in this case - to add the past tense ending onto…so In theory a little bit more memory required.
Both used and understood the same.
You can pull the same trick with the future of gwneud - it’s a cool thing - you can say ‘I will do’ …’wna i’…and add your standard verb. Handy!
Rich
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Thank you, Rich. I thought that was probably the case but wanted to check. Thanks again.
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Hi, bizzielizzie,
Its easy to miss on the audio, but Iestyn explains the full “wnaeth e ddim dweud” (he did not say) and also the short “Ddwedodd e ddim” (sort of - “said he not”) at about 12:46 into the sound track.
Edit: actually I think he explains the short form first.
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It’s a good link between things isn’t it, but not quite sure myself how to use it correctly. I tend to find peidio comes out when there’s simply no other option that would work - when using dim or a nag form doesn’t mentally fit.
In those cases you used, I think I would have said them in different ways anyway, but I could imagine when speaking going for my default er mwyn and then peidio would naturally follow which might be wrong, but er mwyn comes naturally and seems to buy me thinking time. So er mwyn iddo fe beidio would probably be what I would try to say as a link, but the er mwyn is probably superfluous and if that’s wrong then I need to do some intensive work to correct it.
I need advice here as well to help with the fine tuning more than anything else.
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In the meantime…this should be a real quick one.
I found this sequence in an interview:
Doeddwn i ddim yn gwybod….- I didn’t know…
That I believe is the extended version of SSiW Do’n i ddim, so I guess it’s alright.
Fi jyst yn gwybod y… - I just knew
How come this fi in the beginning? And how can you tell it’s a past tense?
Dyna i gyd roeddwn i’n gwybod. - That’s all I knew
This again seems consistent with things I’ve seen before.
But just wondering if I wanted to say:
All I knew was… - I gyda roeddwn i’n gwbod doesn’t sound quite right to me, but maybe it’s a wrong impression…
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Yup, that…
You can’t… And that ‘fi’ is just a very slangy kind of thing.
You’d be understood with ‘i gyd roeddwn i’n gwybod’, but ‘y cwbl o’n i’n gwybod’ sounds a bit more natural to me - might be different down south, though…
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For the “Fi” that is from the fornal yr ydwyf i, which gives all the variations like rydw i, rwy, dw i etc and Fi is just another variant and very common where I live.
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Yes that is right. On the northern course, old and new, they dip into this long form at times. When I was at school I learnt a semi-fictional version of Welsh where everything was in long form. I will spare you the details because it’s not helpful!
(Slightly less confidently) I think that the tense of one half of a sentence can often be neutral and drawn from the context of the other half - you have an ‘y’ as a tantalising ‘that’ for the second portion of the sentence - which I would anticipate is in the past tense - I think the portion you have given could be in several tenses dependent on the other portion. This is a surprising feature of Welsh which I didn’t learn in the fictional version!
(Less confident still!) I think this is essentially an idiom in English - and I’m not sure of the translation- by coincidence in the latest Sgwrs there is the use of ‘dyna’r cwbl’ which seems close.
Rich
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Wow, two people replied whilst I was replying.
I’d go with their answers, ha, ha.
Rich 
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No, I’d just go with Aran’s. I was wondering about using popeth for the all in the other construction “popeth on i’n gwybod”?
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Hello everyone! I just finished my second play-through of Lv. 1 Challenge 16 (S), and there’s a little something that’s puzzling to me.
I have been hearing “y llivyr 'ma” and “y llivyr 'na” and I am wondering, is that the difference between “this book” and “that book?” I was feeling pretty baffled until I went to write this post, when that theory came to me just now after going to look at the vocabulary notes again. Before, I was just wondering if it’s because I am slightly hearing-impaired. 
Diolch yn fawr iawn! 
Sasha 
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yup
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Thank you, thank you! The answer came to me as I composed my question hahaha, but it is wonderfully comforting to have the mystery resolved and the solution confirmed! Diolch yn fawr iawn eto! 
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You’d definitely be understood - I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone say it - something sounds faintly odd about it, but I’m not sure why…