Hello,
Please can someone tell me the difference between well da fi and well I fi. I never know which one to use when. Add the ‘beiddio’ for not, and the whole thing becomes a mess.
Many thanks
It might help to try and think ‘literally’ on these.
Well 'da fi (= I prefer) is literally “better with me” (well gyda fi),
Well i fi (= I’d better) is literally “better for me”
Adding beidio (well 'da fi beidio = I prefer not / well i fi beidio = I’d better not) might be easier if you think of beidio as ‘refrain’ rather than ‘not’ - I prefer to refrain / I’d better refrain. It sounds a bit posh in English, but it’s fine in Welsh!
Does that help clear it a bit?
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Yes that’s a good way of thinking about it.
Cheers!
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Sometimes there’s a ‘Byddai’n’ at the front, somtimes not (for both well 'da fi, and well i fi). I couldn’t see a pattern to that so presumed it was just optional?
In this case (well 'da fi / well i fi), yes, you could leave out the verb in speech and context would fill in the gap (of course grammatically, there should be a verb in there somewhere - but we don’t necessarily speak grammatically!).
Both of these could be preceded by different tenses, e.g. byddai’n (would), mae’n (is), roedd hi’n (was) - and which one should be in there if it’s been left out will generally automatically be implied in the listener’s ear going by the context & tense of the surrounding conversation.
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Thanks - that’s very useful. As I thought, but nice to have it clarified, and I hadn’t really considered the other tenses, nor thought too much about it at all, in fact - so grateful to roel-1 for bringing it up!
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Always happy to contribute a question. Actually I heard since in Challenge 1 Level 3 that “I’d rather” was translated as ‘well da fi’, but the sense of the sentence was ‘I would prefer’… and so the ‘Byddyn’ was thrown in for good measure in the recording. To remember I now think of ‘gyda fi’ = for me, as preference, and ‘Well i fi’ as “Well, if I…”, something that “ought to” be.
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