Me again. A question about content clauses (confusingly called indirect sentences in Gareth King):
I’m at Level 1, Challenge 12. I don’t remember at what point it came up, but I seem to remember being told that you can’t leave out the bo(d) in sentences such as Dw i’n meddwl bo ti’n siarad hi’n dda iawn (as you could in English).
But somewhere in Challenge 11 or 12 there was something along the lines of Dw i’n meddwl hoffen i fynd nawr. So can you? Could I say Dw i’n meddwl ti’n siarad hi’n dda iawn or would that be wrong?
Yes, it’s just that cysgwch is the formal (or plural) form, so more like an order, but cysga is the informal singular form which of course is the form you’d normally use to a child
Bod is used for ‘that’ when the second half of the sentence, on its own, would use the present tense.
Because in this situation, the ‘bod’ reflects both the tense and the ‘that’ combined (and might have the ‘person’ associated with the second half of the sentence, hanging off of it eg…that I…that you…etc) - it needs to be there.
For other tenses in the second half eg would, should, could, will, did - y or yr is technically used for ‘that’ - but this one, like English, is more often than not dropped in speech.
In this situation the verb that follows handles the tense and the ‘person’ that follows, as normal.
Eg
I think (that) I should go now
Dw i’n meddwl (y) dylwn i fynd nawr
I think (that) I would like to go now
Dw i’n meddwl (yr) hoffwn i fynd nawr
I think thatyouare speaking it very well
Dw i’n meddwl bo’ti’n siarad hi’n dda iawn.
Very enlightening, Rich, thanks! And also fascinating. It seems the idea in the present tense content clause is something like “(I think) (of) you being speaking etc.” What a language.
Every Monday I look forward to my new challenge arriving and I always enjoy the whole process so much. However, I have just one question. I always follow the instructions closely as regards the extra activities like constructing sentences or listening to speeded up conversations, but sometimes find when I receive the new instructions, that I should have been carrying on with an activity that was set weeks previously. Would it be possible to include in the list of activities each week, a note to tell us which exercises we should be carrying forward from before? To be honest, I get confused enough by the language sometimes, so it would be nice to be clear on which exercises I should be doing on any given week! Thank you for all you do, the course is great and if you could just tweak the weekly instructions a tiny bit it would help enormously…
Shwmae pawb, I am very new here and was directed by admin to ask all you friendly guys a question. I will be starting the course soon when my son starts school so we’ll dysgu siarad Cymraeg together. Question is - wanting baby name but worried about it being incorrect - basically looking for something that means protector/hunter/younger brother/born before - any advice? Hope it’s ok to ask, feel free to ignore if not. Diolch yn fawr iawn, dw’in gyffrous iawn am dysgu siarad Cymraeg eto! (No idea if that’s right! )
Wow, good question!
The one that springs immediately to mind is Gwilym (the Welsh version of William which means protector/defender).
James (apparently) means “one who follows”, so the Welsh version of that is Iago.
If you Google “welsh first names” you’ll find quite a few lists of names with their meanings, e.g. this one picked at random has quite a lot https://www.wales101.com/welsh-baby-boys-names
Hello,
I’ve accumulated a short list of tiny questions over the last several weeks and was wondering if anybody could answer any of them:
Why is it ‘Oedd o isio i ti ddweud wrthot ti…’ instead of ‘dweud’? My best guess is the ‘i ti’ is an intrusive addition?
Why is if ‘wrthaf fi’ and not ‘wrtha i’? I admit ‘wrthaf fi’ rolls of the tongue much easier.
Why is ‘a’ used before ‘weles’ instead of ‘ac’? My guess: w is a consonant in that context?
I’m really stumped by ‘i’w fwyta’ vs. ‘i fwyta’. As best I can figure out, i’w happens after things involving ‘peth’ (including ‘rhywbeth’) but I can’t make sense of how that translates. Why would there even be an ‘ei’ in that context to begin with? For example: ‘Mae fy nhad isio rhywbeth i’w fwyta.’ vs. ‘Wyt ti wedi cael digon i fwyta rŵan?’ This one confuses me most of all of them.
Ok so maybe it’s not quite so tiny a post, but these questions are bugging me.
I’m no expert, but thought I might have a go at answering - apologies if this causes more confusion, and please feel free to correct.
Ti is the subject of this sub-clause, so causes a soft mutation of the following word.
These are both valid options.
There is an implied pre-verbal particle (mi or fe) which causes the verb to mutate but hides vowel.
You’re on the right track. “I’w fwyta” is a contraction of “i ei fwyta (o)”, where the pronoun refers back to the “peth” at the beginning of the sentence. I don’t know if it helps. but I found it made more sense when remembering that “peth” means “thing” even though it would be translated as “what” in questions.
She said she wanted to speak with me. Dwedodd hi bod hi’n moyn siarad gyda fi.
So far okay - I assume that the “pseudo past tense” (subjunctive originally) wanted in EL reported speech isn’t needed here; after all, they are talking about the present (same thing in my native German). However:
Dwedodd hi bod hi’n moyn siarad gyda fi neithiwr. She is saying something about the past here. So why is it not:
Dwedodd hi oedd hi’n moyn siarad gyda fi neithiwr?
Or in other words, why can I combine bod and neithiwr here? Does the bod perhaps not signal the present at all? Is the whole thing a kind of she-stated-being-in-a-state-of-wanting-to …, no matter whether now or last night?
Sorry for the long explanation, I hope this still qualifies as a “tiny question”.
I think the answer us that at that time what she said was “I want to speak with you”, I.e. present tense. Using oedd hi’n moyn… would imply that at that time what she had said was that she had wanted to speak with you at some unspecified time previous to that occasion
This seems to be a pattern with bod. It always seems to be followed by present tense. @rich explained why to me once, but I can’t remember why, just that this is the case
@johnwilliams_6 Aargh, bingo, of course!! So bod does refer to the present. Thank you so much.
@emma-ireland Yes, Rich had explained that to me, too, a few questions further up. What had stumped me here was that I imagined the lady saying: “I wanted to speak with you last night”, and then someone reporting this. However, as johnwilliams has clarified, the situation is that she just said: “I want to speak with you” - and she said this last night. In which case the bod fits, of course.
, one or two irregular forms. 
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