Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Can’t off the top of my head think of any examples when that should be happening - can you remember any of them? :slight_smile:

Thanks, Aran. In lesson 8, around 16 mins we have the question, 'When did you start learning? ', which as I expected, takes pryd. But then just after 18
minutes, we have ’ I wanted to remember when you started '. I thought this would take pan but the speakers use pryd.

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“when” can mean two different things in that English sentence.

The “when” could serve to mark the location in time, or to ask about the location in time.

As a marker, “I wanted to remember when you started” would mean that the answer to “When did you want to remember?” was “When you started”. It’s the “when” in “He started to cry when he saw that he had broken the vase”.

But what “I wanted to remember when you started” doesn’t use this when to situate the “I wanted to remember” in time – instead, the “(the time) when you started” is sort of like a noun phrase, the object of “I wanted to remember”, the thing that you wanted to remember.

That’s why it’s not a pan situation, I think.

…I’m sorry, that wasn’t a “quick answer”, was it!

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Oh my! It may take me a little while to get my head around that. But thank you.

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You could restructure the second sentence (I wanted to remember when you started learning) as a question:

I wanted to remember; when did you start learning?

So I think that’s why this takes pryd rather than pan.

Whereas, pan is more like while (not the exact same) - pan o’n i’n ifanc - When (whilst) i was young. At the time I was young.

I think that’s right :slight_smile:

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Ha ha. Yes I think that we will just get used to what sounds right and to copy it. The same as we do in English. My guess is that we will always get away with “pan” for when in a statement, but also ok to use pryd for “the time when” type statements.

I remember passing that part of the course and thinking exactly the same thing. I tried to make sense of it but couldn’t so this thread is helpful. However, the bottom line appears to be that there are some obvious times to use pryd or pan but, occasionally, it all seems to get too complicated. My answer to that was to just let it go rather than try to work it out. I do like to get things in the right ‘box’ but sometimes it just isn’t helpful in the greater scheme of learning the annoying/wonderful language.

Pryd…? for when…? - questions, and this includes indirect questions like I wanted to remember when you started, that @philipnewton and @AnthonyCusack were talking about.

Pan… for when… - statement, not question.

Many dialects use pryd also for statements.

Pan often sounds like pen in Gogland.

:slight_smile:

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Yes - because this is what we call an indirect question; these do not have question marks, but they still count as questions where it comes to the pryd / pan choice.

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Thank you to everyone who has replied. I think I’ve understood this now!

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If it’s any consolation, I’m absolutely delighted that Gareth (and Philip and Anthony) weighed in here with all that stuff about indirect questions - because my first take when I read your post was ‘Oh, um, yes, that sort of doesn’t work as we said it did, I wonder why not’…:wink:

So I can guarantee you that I did NOT use ‘pryd’ in that sentence because I had correctly learnt about indirect questions - which means enough exposure and enough not worrying WILL get you there… :slight_smile:

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I definitely agree with Aran, it’s only because you asked the question that I thought about it. So I had no idea I was indirectly asking a question :smile:

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Now EVERYTHING that EVERYONE says sounds to me like an indirect question… :scream:

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That reminded me of the centipede poem. It’s usually best not to think about these things or it all just gets too confusing! :scream:

A centipede was happy – quite!
Until a toad in fun
Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?"
This raised her doubts to such a pitch,
She fell exhausted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.
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I hear you :slight_smile:

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@aran and @margarethall - this stuff happens to me and I only have two legs :joy:

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rigg weltered is from norse? Yorkshire dialect … is it pushing a pregnant sheep off its back?

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It is. Rigg - from general Scandinavian word for back. Weltered, I think, is sort of a form of trapped. In Lincolnshire wolds, I’ve heard Farweltered too. And you’re right, it’s usually a ewe in lamb and carrying a heavy fleece which leaves the poor beast with a nice flat back to get stuck on. Although you do see the same thing with non-pregnant, well-fleeced ewes that have just slipped in a gap. Sheep language persists a long time, as in the old counting systems which you’d recognise as being similar to Welsh.:sheep::sheep:

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‘Rigg’ is Viking for English ‘ridge’ (the back of a hill - think of those places where hills have names like 'The Hog’s Back’s), German ‘Ruck’ as in ‘rucksack’.

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Yup, Rygg = back, spine, ridge in modern Swedish, Ryg, Danish. Also Ryggsack, Swedish for rucksack (can’t find umlaut for a, sorry).

Having rethought the ‘weltered’ part, I recall that being an old world for confused. That might work as an origin.

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