Bo'/ oeddet ti

Welsh General / Questions
#1

Hi,
What’s the difference between these two sentences?

  1. O’n i’n meddwl bo’ ti isio codi yn gynnar yn y bore
  2. O’n i’n meddwl oeddet ti isio codi yn gynnar yn y bore

Is #1 grammatically correct and #2 is not?

Thanks for any help on this.

#2

I would say that 1 is

I thought that you want to get up early in the morning

and 2 is

I thought that you wanted to get up early in the morning.

But I’m happy to be told otherwise.

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#3

The first one is correct, by my understanding.

I can’t explain this in technical terms, but basically the past tense at the beginning (o’n) makes the rest of the sentence also past tense by association, so you don’t need to put the past tense in again (with oeddet).

That’s not how it works in English, but it is in Welsh.

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#4

Okay, thank you, that makes sense!

#5

I feel I should add that if you break up the sentence with something like “os” or “ond” then you do need to re-state the past tense. So something like “o’n i’n meddwl os oeddet ti isio…” would be correct (I believe).

There will be a technical, grammatical explanation for this but I don’t know what it is! I just know that seems to be the pattern.

#6

I’m coming along to tell you otherwise, Margaret :slight_smile:

1 is correct, while your proposed translation of it is surely not correct English, for it breaks the rule about sequence of tenses - I don’t know about you, but I thought that you want… sounds unnatural to me, even though the present is being referred to. Similarly, when someone reveals that, contrary to our assumption, they are not Italian but Spanish, we say to them I thought you were Italian, not *I thought you are Italian, which is definitely wrong.

Option 2 with oeddet ti is technically wrong, and arises through (unnecessary) mirroring of the English sequence of tenses.

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