Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Yeah, pretty much. “She had me/got me to read books and then to write about them.”

2 Likes

„‘Sa‘m pwynt cario ‘mlaen fel‘ma.“ This probably means „I don‘t see the point of carrying on like that“, but where exactly does the „‘Sa‘m“ part come from? I vaguely remember sa i‘n gwybod = dw i ddim yn gwybod, but that doesn‘t seem to fit here.

It is similar to “sa i‘n gwybod = dw i ddim yn gwybod”. In this case the “Sa‘m pwynt” = “does dim pwynt”

1 Like

I thought Llyfr Glas Nebo was too Northern for that - I was about to suggest something like Fysai ddim pwynt for “there’d be no point” - am I wrong?

1 Like

No, not wrong Richard, it could be that - without the rest of the passage to know whether the speaker is using present or conditional tense it’s hard to say for certain, but both would contract like that, so it could be either.

The sentence she says before that is „Sgin i‘m byd arall i ddysgu i chdi“, so I think „does dim“ makes more sense here.

1 Like

I think @RichardBuck is right here, the language of the book would be more likely to use “sa’m” for the conditional.

I would have thought the same. But in her own translation Manon writes:
“I don’t have anything else to teach you, Siôn,” she said yesterday. […] “There’s no point carrying on like this.”
(Quoted from https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/august-2019-welsh-the-blue-book-of-nebo-manon-steffan-sos

4 Likes

Interesting! Another reason not to worry if it’s “northern” or “southern”, it’s all Welsh

2 Likes

There‘s a translation? Now I have to try and not look at it while reading the original :sweat_smile:

Not yet, at least not as a complete book. She published the first chapters as a sort of teaser, and as far as I saw on her Twitter, she found a publisher.

1 Like

Summer '21 is the word on the street.

Well, the actual word on the street is ARAF, but you know what I mean.

6 Likes

Yes - actually it’s a contraction of does 'na ddim pwynt - so (doe)s ('n)a (ddi)m pwynt , quite a contraction! And indeed this is really the origin of the sa i… negative set - sa i’n gwybod is probably way back (nid oe)s (ohon)a i’n gwybod, then onward with so ti’n… (etc), which is (nid oe)s (ohon)ot ti’n….; similarly the SW set smo fi…, which includes the ddim instead of the nid: smo fi’n gwybod is probably (doe)s (di)m o(hono) fi’n gwybod.

Am sbort!
What fun!

7 Likes

A lot of my instinctive Welsh is from Primary school (nearly 30 years ago!). I went to an English medium school but had a first language Welsh teacher for a few years and it obviously made it’s mark. Well my default for please is os gwelwch yn dda is that not really said now? Do people just say plis? Should I try to re educate my default for modern times? :slightly_smiling_face: Thanks

1 Like

Plenty of people still say “os gwelwch yn dda” (and also “os gweli di’n dda” :wink: ), although, yes, you hear plenty of “plîs” too - I myself use “plîs” more often than I should but I haven’t given up on o.g.y.dd completely - it’s just a natural (unfortunate, yes, but natural) thing to do because it’s so much quicker to say!
Stick to what you’re happy with, and if you can avoid “plîs”, more power to you - you’ve got more willpower than me! :smiley:

3 Likes

o.g.y.dd

Perhaps we can shorten to just that? Conveniently it already looks like a Welsh word!

Ga i omled, ogydd?

6 Likes

I often receive emails with it on like that. Took me ages to figure out what the hell it was (not in any dictionary, obviously!) :wink:

2 Likes

Thank you. I’ll carry on as I am then. Though I’ll probably end up saying plis now I’ve thought about it so much :laughing:

2 Likes

In the challenges I hear Aran and Catrin bouncing back and forth between “nest ti fwynhau/nes i fwynhau” and “nest ti mwynhau/nes i mwynhau”. Are both forms (mutated and not mutated) equally fine in that phrase?

It should be mutated but you won’t be misunderstood either way so don’t worry.

1 Like