Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Yes, it’s essentially this pattern - ymadael sounds a bit more formal, though, I’d say…

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I agree - it’s not something you hear much. And unlike gadael, you’re meant to use â after it:

Mae’r DU yn gadael yr UE
Mae’r DU yn ymadael â’r UE
The UK is leaving the EU

Also used for ‘depart’ with modes of transport, incidentally:

Mae’r trên ar fin ymadael
The train is about to depart

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Diolch! You have taught this aged republican that Deyrnas is Kingdom! I gazed at DU thinking, “Brenin…??” and finally looked it up!! I see it comes from ‘deyrn’ ‘tyrant, monarch, ruler’ Lovely description of the whole institution of monarchy! (To all monarchists, this is not intended as a personal insult to any who feel differently from me!).

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What are the adjective rules for descriptive word spelling…

Sach lledr … or Sach lledrol …for leather sack/bag?
Why do some adjectives add an -ol (is probably my main Question here!)

Diolch

Sorry, no idea… :slight_smile:

[But it’s ‘sach lledr’].

Well sach lledr is correct, and my (strong!) guess is that *sach lledrol is a hypercorrection, along the same lines as people these days in English who think that the correct ‘family quarrel’ is in some way ‘incorrect’, and that it should be *‘familial quarrel’ (which it shouldn’t). I can’t believe any native speaker would say *sach lledrol, any more than they would say *bocs prenol for bocs pren ‘wooden box’!!

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Ooh, I rather love that.

[starts planning to call everything a hypercorrection]

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An excellent excuse for mutating where I wasn’t supposed to, methinks! :wink:

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I plan on hypocorrections at best :wink:

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‘Sorry, I know that sounds odd, but I like to be hypercorrect…’

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Diolch ond…
I see some welsh words add an -ol to become an adjective…this is where I get confused which ones do and which dont

Or like how…cywir = correct…but yn gywir means correctly?

Waht is the type of word “correctly”…adjective verb? I dont know my english grammar sadly…school never taught it

I know it’s frustrating when you’re focusing on it - but honestly, the best answer is not to focus on it - just get yourself into as many conversations as possible, and listen to as much radio/TV as possible, and you’ll develop a better and better ear for which do get used and which don’t… :slight_smile:

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To add to this…i know a few people who started learning around the same time. One in September in a classroom and two with ssiw a month or two later.

The one in traditional lessons writes page after page of notes, attends lessons every week and yet struggles not just with speaking, but in reading, writing and listening. I suspect they are overthinking everything.

I know another who has done ssiw but won’t move on until they feel they have ‘mastered’ a lesson. They too struggle and overthink things. (In my opinion).

The last has pushed themselves and soldiered on through new challenges, picking up new words, new structures and hence more confidence. This person listens to the radio, watches S4C etc.

The overall effort of all can’t be faulted. However the last one is not only the most successful speaker but also listener and reader.

@Richmountart (sorry for embarrassing you), I salute you.

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Would I be correct to use ‘Mae gen i wythnos tan bod rhaid i mi sefyll yr arholiad’ to mean ‘I have a week until I have to sit the exam’? It feels natural to me but my Welsh is definitely rusty.

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That’s an adverb.

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I suppose my question is then where can I find adverb help online? :blush:

Do you really need it? If you have an adjective by itself (without a noun), it usually takes ‘yn’ in Welsh, no need to worry about adverbs
For instance:
“car cyflym” a speedy car
“mae’r car yn gyflym” the car is speedy
“mae’r car yn mynd yn gyflym” the car goes speedily

(poor example, but it won’t work with fast)

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Aha - another ‘methinker’ @AnnaC! Haven’t used it for a while but it brought back memories of the rather strange/quizzical looks I got in Germany many years ago when learning the language and used what I believed to be the German equivalent i.e “mich dünkt”. Perhaps someone might know if I was wrong/right or whether German sensibility or whatever is just different to ours? :smile:

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@philipnewton should be able to answer this

(about “methinks”)

Depends on what you mean with “equivalent”.

In meaning, yes, but in style, I’d say no – the German comes across as a lot more archaic to me than the English.

It’d be fine in a period drama set in the Middle Ages but from anybody born in the last 100 years it’s likely to come across as comical, I think. Not merely humorous as “methinks” might.

I wouldn’t even be surprised if there were a fair number of people who don’t know that word.

(I’m not even sure what the difference is between mich dünkt and mich deucht. …search… Ah, apparently, deuchte was the old irregular past tense but deucht is now sometimes used as an alternative in the present tense.)

http://retropedia.de/Wortgeschichte.12.0.html?&cHash=6509b47ec8ae0db93df9d2992c553425&tx_ttnews[backPid]=35&tx_ttnews[swords]=Frau&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=896 has an interesting comment on using it in a non-poetical context, with something as prosaic as “our colleague seems to be having an extended lunch break again today”, to add a kind of verbal wink.

So… it’s tricky. Denotation pretty much the same, connotation / pragmatics not so much.

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