Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Oh, OK! Just goes to show what a minefield the Slavonic languages are, doesn’t it? :slight_smile:

What ever happened to good old nominative, accusative, genetive etc?

one of those buses did indeed turn up today on Radio Cymru this morning, during the news I heard an “ar un adeg” - I wasn’t really listening to the story, but my ears picked up when I heard it - are there Radio Cymru spies watching this forum?

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I quite agree with you, John. It is appalling. :confused:

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Is it regional? I say it all the time and learnt it from Emma who speaks Glantafeg with a strong Gog influence.

Wait a minute. I was quite enjoying not to find anything reminding me of latin (except for week days names, llaeth, llywr, ysgrifennu and maybe a few numbers.)
And now I see this. :unamused:

:grinning:

p.s.

(In this context at least), I’m really not! :wink:

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Oh by the way, no, there’s another thing that oddly reminds me of Italian language, and that’s how some forms of the past tense (for example) sound:

wnes i
wnest ti

Which also remind me of another question related to “I” and verbs.
Does the “I” always move after the verb in past tense?
Also in the challenges dweud (and a few others) seem to change all by itself (dwedes i, dwedest i) while many others seem to add wnes and wnest before the verb.
(er…not sure I was able to explain too well, but I hope you understand)

Does it mean you have more options to do the same thing (once again!) or some verbs are different?

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Not just the past tense. “Dw i”, “Mae e”, “Maen nhw” (present tense), “Bydd hi”, “Bydda i”, “Gwna i” (future) all have the verb preceding the pronoun. Welsh is generally Verb - Subject - Object order.

Wnes is a verb. It’s the past tense of gwneud (to do / to make). The “verb” that it is before is actually a verb-noun which, I think, is a bit like the gerund in other languages (the “ing” ending in English). I’m sure a grammarian will correct me where necessary.

I think everything I’ve said is correct. If not, I welcome corrections. If it is… bravo to Iestyn and Aran who have taught me well! :smiley:

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Yes, there are two ways of expressing the past and other tenses - one changes the form of the verb itself or there’s the alternative of using forms of gwneud, e.g. wnes i etc, in front of the main verb so you say other dwedes i or _wnes i dweud to mean more or less the same thing (@garethrking can explain any subtle differences much better than I can).
By the way, it’s difficult (impossible? :slight_smile:) to hear the difference, but it’s dwedest ti, wnes ti rather than dwedes i, wines i

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Historically, I think it was. However, by now it has also become a generational thing in that it is spreading across the country amongst chiefly young people. People who are unaware of its origin can regard it as a bit slangy, a bit yoof-speak, and mistake it for what would be in English something like me is.

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Oh ok! I didn’t know it was the past tense of gwneud, by the way.

Let me just say that part of my challenge to myself to learn Welsh (even though it is really unnecessary in my life!) includes trying to keep the process as enjoyable and smooth as possible.

I’m still having a hard time reading because what I see is really weird and don’t really translate into the right sounds in my head, so it gets really confusing (thinking of “ll” for example that’s really common in Italian but sounds totally different).

So I’m mostly focusing on listening for now, and what I hear and picture in my mind is actually “nessi” and “nesti” . :smile:

Now I’m trying to put things in some order, so I go searching through vocabulary lists how to write these things in order to make questions and understand better, but sometimes I don’t notice the connections (like reverse order in other tenses, etc)

Yup. Agreed. :slight_smile:

I believe “Wnes i…” is like saying “I did…” for the past tense in English:

“Wnes i ddarllen y papur ddoe” is “I read the paper yesterday” (literally “I did read the paper yesterday”).
“Wnes i nofio ddoe” - “I swam yesterday” (literally “I did swim yesterday”)

Again, someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you see that kind of periphrastic construction in other Western European languages. Or if you do, not as frequently.

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Sorry @gisella-albertini , the spellchecker helped me to mistype that - should have said “dwedest ti, wnest ti, rather than dwedest i, wnest i”. Apologies for the confusion :worried:

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Yes, I had understood what you meant despite the spellchecker (it always mess up with Welsh words when I try to write them too).

Don’t worry, it’s not your mistype that confuses me at the moment! :wink: :smile:

i hadn’t noticed, this definitely helps me remember it, thanks!

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Ah no I was thinking of learning modern languages in the 70s and possibly even English. Although I probably learnt English and the Geordie dialect SSiW fashion. I cant say that I used the words subject, object and posessive until quite recently. Unless I was looking out of the window for that lesson. On the plus side, we did study Dylan Thomas and Robbie Burns, who were both great for humour and dialect.

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Yes - in fact there are three ways of doing the past, of course - the third and simplest way is with ddaru instead of nes i etc. But that’s very Gog.

I have never really detected much difference, even subtle, between the ‘endings’ past tense (Preterite I) and the nes i past tense (Preterite II) - they seem to all intents and purposes interchangeable, though in common phrases like ‘I said’, ‘she said’ (etc) perhaps the endings one is more common.

You’re pretty safe whichever one you choose, really. And any arguments or criticisms of your choice can simply be retorted with the ‘Well that’s always how we say it down our way’ line. :wink:

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Quite so - except that the Welsh version does not carry the emphasis connotation of the English version.

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That’s half the fun of them, of course… :wink:

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A word on the site info matrix sign. Manylionca. For details. The ca ending looked strange and isnt in the GPC. Could it be formal for obtain details? As in cael manylion. Or just wrong. To be fair, the other translations look professional.