A little confused by the tenses in this sentence. Please help :)

Welsh General / Questions
#1

Hello everyone

Here is my little confusion:

Your brother said - that you started - a week ago = The English sentence SSiW wanted me to translate.

Dwedodd dy mrawd di - wnes ti ddechrau - wythnos yn ôl = What I think SSiW said in Welsh.

Your brother said - you did start - a week ago = Me translating literally in order to better understand.

I thought the past tense only needed to be used at the start, and then it is implied throughout the rest of the sentence. However, and please correct me if I am wrong (which I am very likely to be lol):

Dwedodd = said (past tense)
wnes = did (past tense)

Am i just overthinking all of this? How do I know when to explicitly state the tense, or to allow for the context to implicitly indicate tense?

Sorry for this monstrocity of a question, it is hard to write this question with my train of thought colliding into a wall :smiley:

Very kind thank you in advance :slight_smile:

Chris

#2

Both ‘said’ and ‘started’ are actions that began and ended in the past, so they both use the inflected preterite. Dwedodd is the inflected preterite for dweud; wnest ti is the inflected preterite of ‘gwneud’, to do, do wnest ti ddechrau is just another way of saying dechreuaist ti.

So the tenses are all present and correct.

#3

Oh no, I understand that the tenses used in the sentence are correct.
My confusion lies in why both tenses are being used within the same sentence?

I thought that once the tense is established at the beginning, there’s no need to use additional past tense verbs in Welsh? (within the same sentence). I suppose it’s likely done to emphasize the specific tense (whether perfect, imperfect, preterite, or another).

#4

There is an alternate way of saying this that does indeed just pick up the tense from the beginning - Dwedodd dy frawd i ti ddechrau wythnos yn ôl.

That’s a very common way to say it, but you’ll hear it with the past tense verb used as well.

1 Like