Angen and ishai

Hello I’m a beginner learner and I thought that need in Welsh was Amgen but on the recording it says something like ishai (probably very wrong spelling). Can someone enlighten me please. I’m learning to speak Welsh from the South.

Croeso @julie-drake!

You’ll find variation with “to need” in South Wales with some people using angen and others isie so it’s good to become familiar with both.

With angen you can use the common word order - dw i angen and what you need can be to do something or a thing, e.g. dw i angen siarad Cymraeg (I need to speak Welsh) or dw i angen car newydd (I need a new car)

With isie (officially spelt ‘eisiau’ but you’ll see it written isie as well) the structure is different, e.g. mae isie i fi siarad Cymraeg (I need to speak Welsh) or mae isie car newydd arna i (I need a new car).

With SSiW you’ll get the isie version in the audio files, but if you use AutoMagic as well, you’ll hear the angen version there.

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Thank you so much. That’s really cleared it up for me.

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My understanding with eisiau is that it’s not a verb, “to need” but a noun, “a need.”
Therefore you have to say, “There is a need to me/I have a need” which necessates different words and a different sentence structure.

The big historical Welsh dictionary, GPC, actually defines both angen and eisiau just as nouns, reserving their “almost like a verb” use for a usage footnote at the end in each case :slight_smile:

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And you can actually use angen in the same way as isie - mae angen i fi fynd, oes angen i ti siarad? (I need to go, do you need to speak?)

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I thought eisiau was used more for I want, rather than I need.
Maybe I’m wrong.

It is in the north, Rob, but in the south it’s often used for “to need” (where moyn is “to want”)

@RobMorgan you’ll notice a difference in pronunciation often too, where eisiau can sound like isio in the north and isie in the south. You’ll see it written like that at times, especially in novels where the author is trying to convey exactly how a character speaks.