Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Sorry to disturb the current discussion but may I one quick question:

Gramar terms in Welsh: I’d like to know the difference of goddrych and gwrthrych. I’ve got from the Geiriaduron that gwrthrych is object (or body) and goddrych is subject. Is that related with subjective and objective? In Slovene (of not using the adjective form) it translates all the same = “predmet”. So what’s the difference in grammar really inbetween them.

Thank you.

I think you’re on the right track with objective vs subjective. One of my dictionaries defines gwrthrych as “something that can be seen, imagined or touched,” and then gives a second definition as a grammatical term meaning “the opposite of goddrych.”

Hi, Tatjana. Here is something that I found. I’m sure it will mean more to you than it does to me.
Subject (osebek), predicate (povedek), object (predmet) and adverb clause (prislovno določilo).
So. in Welsh, I assume that the following applies from what you posted:
Goddrych is subject (osebek); Gwrthrych is object (predmet).

So in Welsh grammar, this will have an affect on word order, mutations, pronouns, etc.

Is this what you had in mind?

Da iawn ti!!!

You cleared one more mistery to me which I didn’t ask and that is “prislovno določilo”. I just couldn’t put that “adverb clause” in reasonable translation but now I know!

Thank you to you @Deborah-SSi also. You both cleared (almost the obvious but not seen by me) things.

Diolch yn fawr iawn!

Hwyl!
Tatjana :slight_smile:

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What’s the difference between dwi’n (or dw i’n) and rwy’n?

I’ve seen them before verbs and they both seem to mean “I”…?

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No difference in meaning - there are quite a cluster of alternatives in fact… :slight_smile:

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Yes, they both mean “I” Gisella. There is no real difference.
They are both shortened forms of the very very formal full version which is Yr rydw i’n.

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:open_mouth:

Oh well, if that’s the full version, I’m glad Welsh people seem to really appreciate conciseness. :smiley:

So I can just pick the one that sounds better to me, and that’s going to work exactly the same in any context?

It’s easy to understand having many different words to mean time, as we said yesterday for example.

But how come there’s also many for “I”? This is a bit odd. :thinking:

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yes - and no! These are present tense forms, so yes you can use whichever you prefer when you’re speaking in the present tense. If you are speaking in future or past tenses though, no, you’ll need the version of “I” in those tenses (future = bydda(f) i’n ; past = roeddwn i’n/ r’on i’n).

I think it’s because, like with our yes and no, you are never simply saying “I”, you are always qualifying it with a verb: “I am”/“I will”/“I was” etc. Where you get different contractions all meaning the same thing (dwi’n, rwy’n, wi’n), it’s generally because different areas contracted the original form to varying degrees and they’ve all become normal!

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There are formal versions, and informal versions which differ by region - all of which in theory are shortenings of the same thing I believe.

I guess it’s an extremely common pattern - even more so than a greeting - and there are loads of ways to say Hello (for example).

In the real world this one isn’t too much of an issue as dw i is universal - and the odd other version might fly by but you’ll end up going with the flow of the sentence.

So peidiwch â phoeni on this one but you don’t strike me as a worrier anyway :grinning:

Rich

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I hope you don’t mind me ‘correcting’ this to yr ydwyf i’n.

The reason I want to do that is to add fi’n as a southern (south western?) alternative to dwi’n dw i’n rwy’n wy’n wi’n etc.

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:flushed: Absolutely don’t mind at all Rob! You are 100% correct and I’m blaming my mistake on only having had one cup of coffee this morning! :scream::joy:

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This brings me ever-so-nicely on to my question!

I’ve been listening to Coffi Du (the intro music for Level 3) and it contains the lyric:

“Tyd a coffi du i mi” which, the translation says, is “Give me a black coffee”.

This confused me for a while, because the verb I know for “to give” is “rhoi”, and even in short form or command form I would have expected something at least starting with R or Rh! After much searching, I’ve found something that says this is a northern form of “dere!” (“come!”), so…

… does this lyric actually translate literally as “Bring a black coffee to me” / “Bring me a black coffee”?

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yup! :grin:

Just to add a little punctuation to this sentence …

Tyd is ty’d from tyrd and followed by â (with a to bach) meaning, as you know, to bring or fetch (I think lit. “come with”). Also, strictly speaking, â should be followed by an A.M.

So now we have …
“Ty’d â choffi du i mi”. (The A.M. is slowly dying out, which I think is a shame, so may not be pronounced in the song.)

As always with my attempts at grammar, a huge pinch of salt is provided should you need to take one.

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But now…I also need to ask about the “me”. :grinning:

Wasn’t it “fi”? Now it’s “mi”?

p.s. I’ll be back later, when I have more time to write, about the “I” !

me is generally fi but becomes mi when ‘me’ is the indirect object of the sentence
e.g. tyd â choffi du i mi … the coffee is the direct object and the me is the indirect object!

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I don’t know the Slovene terms, @tatjana - but I suspect ‘predmet’ is wrong for ‘object’ here, it surely (like in Russian) means ‘object’ in the sense of ‘thing’, doesn’t it?

I’m guessing you know Russian - ‘subject’ in the grammatical sense in English means what the Russians call именительный падеж, and ‘object’ (or ‘direct object’) means what they call винительный падеж. Then we also have 'indirect object, which is дательный падеж.

Sorry to get all Cyrillic there - don’t know what came over me…

In related news: whatever happened to that campaign in the 1950s (or was it even 1960s?!) for changing the Welsh alphabet to Cyrillic?

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I don’t think anyone quite answered this question (although Siaron did implicitly, I think):

They mean “I am”, rather than simply “I”.

And in this context, the “i” in “dwi’n” or “dw i’n” (or the one that is understood in “rwy’n”) means “I”, as in English. (Although in other contexts “i” can mean something else, as you probably know).

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Yes, it means object in the sense of thing, however the grammar term is also “predmet”.

Grammar terms are:
osebek = subject
povedek = predicate
predmet = object
prislovno določilo = adverbial particle

Oh, @garethrking Diolch yn fawr iawn!

Now I know!

gwrthrych is “predmet” (object)
and goddrych is “osebek” (subject)!

Writing our grammar terms it just clicked to me that yesterday I understood it all wrong. :slight_smile:

And, well, I know a little Russian but not much really . It’s still a bit of mystery to me but I intend to uncover it in some amount of time. :slight_smile:

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