Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

I’m sure someone more capable will confirm, but is that “arnot ti”? Literally “on you” i think

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Diolch! And that just made me realize that this is the first time (I believe) that we’ve been asked to say “I need SOMETHING” as opposed to “I need TO DO something”. Makes sense that the structure would be a bit different, but it wasn’t explained.

Da iawn @EricaDawn! You’ve worked out the difference for yourself, an essential skill when you’re picking up Welsh from hearing it spoken :star2:

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Hi @EricaDawn! Transcriptions are available for the challenges:) Here’s a screenshot from my laptop showing the “Vocabulary” link to use, and one from my iphone where you’ll see a little speech bubble in the top right - tapping on the speech bubble reveals the transcript. (This might be different on Android phones though). Hope that helps!

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You’re so kind to point that out! Diolch!!

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And now this grammar point will surely stick in my mind! :grinning::+1:t2:

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Yw or oes?
In Old Course level 1, bwtcamp vocab, one of the questions is:
“Have you got everything? Yw popeth gyda ti?”
My answer was “Oes popeth gyda ti?” I am guessing this is wrong because popeth is not a noun or a concrete object that can be possessed but can someone please explain it in grammatical terms?
Diolch!

Oes is used when it is an existential question - i.e. when “there” comes as the second word in the English sentence (or if it would in the literal rendering of the English sentence). As there is no ‘there’ in “Have you got everything”, the Welsh uses yw (or ydy) and not the existential verb ‘oes’.

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Thanks Siaron, that makes a lot of sense and is also an easy way to remember it!

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I always ask the truck drivers in work if they have the paperwork (Oes gen ti’r gwaith paper?) and they always answer with “oes”. Is this just for the SW version using “gyda”? Using Yw/ydy just feels wrong to me.

It’s more to do with being existential than a N/S thing. An existential sentence is information about the existence of something (that you don’t know if they possess), a non-existential sentence is information about something we are already aware of (that you know they do - or should! - possess). It can be a bit subtle because English doesn’t differentiate between existential and non-existential, so we’re not really used to figuring it out in English.
So for your example, it’s oes because you’re simply asking if they have the (necessary) paperwork, but if you were asking “have you got the paperwork (which I gave you this morning)”, it would be ydy because it’s specific paperwork you are aware of before, and in the N using gan, the word order changes to be more like the S using gyda: Ydy’r gwaith papur gen ti.
Does that make sense?

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Not 100% but I’ll work on it. Thanks for the explanation. Always appreciated.

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Level 2 challenge 22 (southern)

Just wondering… why is it Ddweudodd e… Ddwedodd hi… Ddweudest ti (all beginning with a SM) BUT Dweudes i without the soft mutation?

Diolch!

I’m not familiar with the challenge but if you give me the timecodes that they appear, I can check to see if there’s another word causing the mutation.

In the meantime, if they all start a positive sentence sometimes the mutations may be residual after the positive particle ‘fe’ has been omitted in speech and that is simply personal preference - e.g. Iestyn might say them with a residual mutation and Cat may say them without.

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Ah! I went back and all the examples with the SM started a negative sentence. So that must be why…

So, would this be correct then-

Dwedodd e wrtha’i fod e’n moyn bwyta cyn i ni fynd.
BUT
Ddwedodd e ddim wrtha’i beth i wneud.

Diolch :grinning:

Yup, that’s why, and yes, those examples are correct :slight_smile:

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Why does ‘o flaen’ change with person eg L3 Her 6 ‘o’n blaenau ni’? I have figured out that it is a compound preposition, and that the ‘we’ makes flaen/blaen plural but really do not understand why.

This is just the way compound prepositions work. Just think of “in front of me” as “in my front”, and you get o fy mlaen i (but usually you’ll hear this shortened to o’mlaen i)
Then you do the same as appropriate for other persons as well, using mutations as you normally would in possessive constructions:
o dy flaen di, o’i flaen e, o’i blaen hi, o’n blaenau ni, o’ch blaenau chi and o’u blaenau nhw

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That really helps. Thank you so much. Now I will be able to sleep tonight.

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Glad I’m not the only one. I have just completed the first challenge last week and started challenge 2 this week and although I don’t always need thinking time I find there isn’t quite enough of a gap to get my response out then i panic in between pressing the pause button and listening to the correct response.
I’m hoping it’s something I will get used to or it’s off to thr shop for more tissues and “kalms” lol.

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