Thank you. I will have to revisit all those words where I have been hearing v and be sure to change my pronunciation to th!
Helo, pawb! I learnt basic Welsh when I lived in mid-Wales several years ago and having been told it was closest to north Welsh so thatâs the course Iâm following and really enjoying ~ diolch yn fawr, Aran a Catrin! Obviously, thereâs some overlap with south Welsh which Iâm finding an interesting part of language learning but I have a question from Challenge 4 about using efo chdi. I learnt gyda ti (singular familiar) and gyda chi (singular formal/plural) and Iâm wondering whether there are two equivalent forms of efo chdi or does it cover all situations? I know Aran said you sometimes hear efo ti but Iâm not sure whether that is a different pronoun or just pronunciation. Also (if I can squeeze in a cheeky second question ), what is the general consensus over use of informal and formal pronouns these days? I currently live in France where itâs still an important common courtesy to use the correct forms but Iâm wondering if things are more relaxed in Wales?
Welcome!
I wonât answer the question about the relationship between chdi and ti because itâs not something that goes on in my region. My daughter lives in Bangor and chdi is a word she uses, but I consider it to be something unfathomably exotic.
However, I will say that modern Welsh is much more casual when it comes to the use of ti over chi. Youâll even hear children using ti when talking to teachers for example. For me to use chi with someone, they would have to be either a high court judge or someone maybe two generations older.
Diolch, thatâs very helpful. As the only people I spoke Welsh with were friends, family and the children I taught, I never really needed formal chi so wasnât sure how much itâs used (or not). Hopefully, I wonât need to speak to too many high court judges! Iâve never come across chdi before but I have to admit I love saying it!
My partnerâs from Bangor, and tends to use chdi with people who are close - so itâs an either/or with ti, and both would be fine as the informal pronoun. I would say that it is particularly marked as northern (north-west, even?) usage. I think itâs lovely
Iâm finding now that I get older, particularly in work, younger people are calling me âchiâ, which horrifies me slightly! I tend to use ti with almost everyone, and have to make a conscious effort to use chi if I think I will need to.
Diolch, Sara. One of my sons-in-law is from Caernarfon so I must ask him if chdi is what he uses, itâs fascinating having family from different parts of Wales but not always easy to make sense of the different versions of Welsh they speak. It sounds like you are officially a âwise elderâ now!
If by that you mean âoldâ, then ⌠yes I suppose I am!
Iâm a little confused about when to use âpanâ vs. âprydâ for âwhenâ. Apparently âpanâ is for statements involving the word and âprydâ is for questions, but Iâve seen statements with the word âwhenâ translated as âprydâ.
An example of what I mean can be found at 18:23 in Northern Level 1, Challenge 8. The sentence âI want to remember when you started.â is translated as âDw i isio cofio pryd wnest ti ddechrau.â Shouldnât it be âDw i isio cofio pan wnest ti ddechrau.â as itâs a statement of when âyouâ started and not a question about it? Thank you so much in advance!
As a basic rule, yes, pan is for statements and pryd is for questions, but thereâs also something a little more subtle going on.
Pryd is used whenever you are referring to a specific time, whereas pan is more âgeneral circumstancesâ - which is why you can find pryd in statements, but never find pan in questions or implied questions (because questions are asking about a specific time).
Thatâs a lovely extra insight from Siaron there
Iâd also say this is a great example of how no two languages ever work in exactly the same way - as long as you get a foothold in the new language, youâll fine tune via exposure - until at some point pan/pryd just make sense to you as pan/pryd instead of as versions of âwhenâ. The key is not to worry - people will understand if you use one they werenât expecting, and if they donât, theyâll ask (and that will help your brain fine tune further)
Hello, Iâve just started Welsh and am loving it. Iâm still in the âfreeâ stage - have completed 2 hours - but will be signing up as soon as I can. Is there anywhere I can find an overview of the course? Iâm someone who still uses paper maps as well as Google when driving because I like to have the big picture of where I am.
Iâm Irish, retired, fluent in my own lovely Irish Gaelic, and learning Welsh is my small contribution to supporting minority languages struggling to survive the in the increasingly Anglicised world.
Thanks
Hi Teresa, and thank you very much for learning Welsh! Go raibh maith agat, if Iâve managed to spell that correctly
The further we go towards customisation/personalisation, the further away we get from set texts, so Iâm afraid we donât have any handy overviews - the closest you could get would be to look at the vocab lists per challenge for Level 1 and 2, I think, but theyâre behind the paywall - sorry about that. Our material isnât anything like the curriculae youâll see for traditional courses, so this kind of stuff has always been a bit tricky for us.
As Aran said in his reply, there isnât really an overview and the vocab lists are behind the paywall⌠but handily, you can also find them here on the forum on this thread Vocabulary from Challenges if that helps.
This makes so much sense now! Thank you! Iâll keep this in mind
I appreciate this way of looking at things, Welsh words making sense as themselves instead of Welsh ways to say English concepts. I hope my post didnât come off as complaining that non-English languages donât work the way English does - that was absolutely not my intent.
No, not at all! Itâs something I talk about all the time, I definitely didnât think you were complaining
Not sure if this is the right place to ask it, but as it is my first question on this forumâŚ
I have been a diligent learner so far, but I was very disheartened by how badly Challenge 10 went for me. One thing that threw me off was something that I was certain that had learnt it before, but that without explanation prompted another result:
I ask you - Dw iân gofyn wrthot ti
Now Iâm positive that I had learnt gofyn i mi earlier, so I had expected something along those lines⌠Is this incorrect, a âchildishâ way of saying things or simply another, equally valid way?
Itâs simply another way of saying it - in the spoken language some people use wrth, some use i. The trick is to use whichever youâre comfortable with or that you hear most often around you but to be aware of the other version that someone else might use.
SSiW will throw in variations like that unexpectedly - exactly as youâd come across them âin the wildâ - so that you get âthrownâ in the safety of the course rather than âthrownâ during a real conversation.
Thanks @siaronjames . To be honest, during conversations I would expect other variations but it may be (at the very least) confusing to do this unannounced during a course - but that might be just me
Iâll give Ch10 a new go with new enthousiasm then
Youâll find that it settles into gofyn i mi as you work through the course, especially from Level 2 on, as that is the most common way and generally considered âstandardâ.
Bore da! Iâve just received my week 3 email, and am fairly confident that Iâve got lessons 1,2&3 down to a reasonable standard, but I may have another few goes at lesson 4 today before moving on. I think I may be a âhigh repetitionâ learner, as I find I get a panic induced brain fog if I donât feel confident enough in what I have already learnt. Iâm currently repeating each lesson at least twice, plus using Automagic to reinforce everything Iâve listened too. I am struggling slightly to get through each lesson and often have several false starts and long pauses (while I deal with some outbreak of chaos!) as I am simultaneously parenting a 5 year old and 5 month old solo through the summer holidays, and donât really get a solid 30mins to concentrate, ever! Iâm also running on about 3 hours sleep a night, so Iâm afraid my poor brain may not be at full power! Anyway, this sounds like a pile of excuses, but my question really is, is this still possible? Iâd love to be able to follow the program properly, but itâs just not possible at the moment. Am I being too ambitious?