In English, it is sometimes useful to make a distinction between ‘I don’t want to’ and ‘I want not to’, though this distinction is sadly not much observed. For example, when a TV newsreader says ‘If you don’t want to know the football results, look away now’ I am tempted to shout at the screen ‘No, no, you mean if you want not to know the football results’ – I don’t want to know the football results in the sense that they are of no interest to me whatsoever and I have no intention of cluttering my mind with them, whereas the newsreader is really addressing those who do want to know the football results, just not yet. Is it possible to convey this distinction in Welsh? Obviously ‘I don’t want to know’ is ‘Dw i ddim eisiau gwybod’, but what about ‘I want not to know’? Is ‘Dw i eisiau ddim gwybod’ possible? Or maybe ‘Dw i eisiau peidio gwybod’ or would that mean ‘I want to stop knowing’? Or is there some other construction?
This one…
Perhaps because of the possible confusion, I think you’d almost always hear ‘dwi isio stopio [verb]’ for ‘I want to stop [verb]’…
On the basis this is a completely wild guess (having not needed to use that phrase myself!) I would probably try something like “Dwi am beidio gwbod”, as ‘am’ can often take the place of ‘eisiau/isio’ for ‘want’ - and in this sense it could be thought of as “I’m for not knowing”.
Ah - Aran has beaten me to posting. What do you think @aran, could we say it that way too?
OK, so Galla ti’n peidio…? for “could you not…?” (please dont).
Yes, pretty much. I guess you could say “Allet ti beidio gwneud hynna?”
Cool, Geordie iawn
Yup - something about that sounds more definite, oddly enough. I HAVE MADE A CONCRETE DECISION NOT TO KNOW.