What am I hearing?

[aran]

So, as I understand it, the pronoun is there because it's picking up the fact that the object, the 'thing' in this case, is preceding the verb-noun (the pronoun is resumptive): if the object follows the verb (Dw i'n gwneud y brecwast) there's no pronoun and no mutation; if it precedes it the pronoun is becoming optional but it's more correct to use it. Is that right?

I'd love to help you, and I was sort of limping along with this until we got to 'resumptive', at which point I realised that the only help I can offer is to fire up the Bat-Signal for @garethrking

[RichardBuck]

Well, that may or may not even be a technical term, never mind the right one
TBH I'd probably be just as happy with some other similar examples, so I can see if I can see what the pattern is... And to know if it's OK to have gormod i'w yfed even though that's not what I've heard. (And I don't mean the Yfed yn diogel adverts, either.)

[garethrking]

So, as I understand it, the pronoun is there because it's picking up the fact that the object, the 'thing' in this case, is preceding the verb-noun (the pronoun is resumptive): if the object follows the verb (Dw i'n gwneud y brecwast) there's no pronoun and no mutation; if it precedes it the pronoun is becoming optional but it's more correct to use it. Is that right?

Yes

[aran]

Holy Grammar Confirmation, Batman!

[Iestyn]

Does that mean it sounds old-fashioned / literary / formal or just another way of saying the same thing? And what happens if you have two verb-nouns (Be' dach chi'n trio gwneud? -> Be' dach chi'n trio ei wneud?) ?

Only the verb directly referring to the beth will have the mutation. So:

Be dach chi'n trio ei wneud - What thing are you trying to it do.
Be dach chi'n ei drio? - What thing are you it trying?

Also in statements:

Dwi'n ei drio fo. - I'm (it) trying it.
Dwi'n trio ei wneud o - I'm trying to (it) do it
Dwi'n trio gwneud rhywbeth - I'm trying to do something

As has been said elsewhere, the first pronoun is often left out, (but there is sometimes a mutation left over to mark its passing.)

[philipnewton]

From the "thank goodness for subtitles" department:

han'di naw = 9:30, apparently -- i.e. hanner awr wedi naw.

(Not sure how to spell the colloquial abbreviation.)

[aran]

(Not sure how to spell the colloquial abbreviation.)

It's not so much a colloquial abbreviation - no-one would write it like that, for example - as just a normal example of elision in natural speech - from hanner wedi naw with the 'awr' implied...

[Jane]

Apologies... just when you thought I’d stopped asking awkward questions on this thread, I’m back!

Currently working on Course 2, Lesson 5. After ‘bydd gen i’ is introduced, the lesson goes through the usual examples with milk, bread, cheese, meat etc from Course 1, before moving on to some different examples such as "bydd gen i awydd i nofio’n gyflym" and "bydd gen i amser i wneud rhwybeth".

However, these are then followed by two more, which don’t appear to follow the same pattern. “I will have a desire to love you" sounds like “bydd gen i awydd dy garu di”, and "I will have a desire to love him” sounds like “bydd gen i awydd ei garu fo”. What has happened to the the ‘i’, or am I simply not attuned to hearing it in this context yet?

[aran]

What has happened to the the ‘i’, or am I simply not attuned to hearing it in this context yet?

'i' is such a slippery little word you'll hear it blinking in and out of existence in speech in lots of different ways... sometimes it's there in heart but not quite in sound - i'w vs ei is a good example of this - sometimes it just feels like an extra syllable too many (I'd put 'awydd dy garu di' down to this)...

Just chatted this through with Catrin, and we've ended up at 'that's just how it is' (which is slightly more detailed than we usually get with grammar) - tagging @iestynap and @garethrking in case they can shed any more light for you.

[Definitely not one for the worry list, of course...]

[garethrking]

bydd gen i awydd dy garu di”, and "I will have a desire to love him” sounds like “bydd gen i awydd ei garu fo”. What has happened to the the ‘i’,

The reason you can't hear an i there (I suggest) is that there shouldn't really be one - awydd doesn't normally have an i after it, except by analogy with English

a desire to go = awydd mynd

It's exactly like, for example, an intention to go which is bwriad mynd, not "bwriad i fynd" which sounds distinctly translated-from-English.

[JohnYoung]

OK, I have a couple of very polite retired friends. The husband was taking a long time to word some fatherly advice to a group of us (in English). I heard his wife gently saying to him: Pwy sy'n neidr? Hopefully see didn't notice my jaw drop in shock.

I thought it best not to ask her if she was really calling him a snake, but couldn't resist searching later. The only non-snake related reference that I could find was one of those Google Translate alternative meanings: Neidr > Slow/Araf with some pictures of slow worms, etc.

Is there any chance that she was just encouraging him to speed up with what he was saying?

[siaronjames]

could she have been asking "pwy sy'n neud e" or "pwy sy'n neud o" i.e. "who is doing it"?

[JohnYoung]

Ah yes. That would be it. They were sharing the presentation. I'm so glad I didn't ask about the snake now.

[Iestyn]

That would have been a classic mis-conversation, because she would almost definitely have misheard your neidr as neud e if you'd used the same sentence / context, and possibly agreed that that was what she had said. The potential for that to spiral out of control....