Bod etc. Oedd/bues i?

So - I’m OK with OEDD in all it’s forms - now I’ve bumped into bues i/buest ti/buodd e…etc, etc. This seems to be doing the same job as oedd. Sorry - confused again! Is it Northern? Or perhaps a different language altogether? :stuck_out_tongue:

No, it’s not a Northern thing - it’s Southern too!
It’s probably the hardest form of bod to get your head around because it really doesn’t correlate very well with any English form of ‘to be’(unless you happen to come from the Forest of Dean or Somerset which still use things like “I beed, im bist, thou bissn’t” which are similar to buodd/buest/ni fuest - but I digress!)
It is a form past tense which kind of describes something that was happening but has finished. Very similar to oedd, but one difference is that you can’t use wedi with bues etc.

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Very interested in this bit about somerset (the next county over from where I grew up)…

Thanks Siaron - I think I want everything to be Northern if I don’t understand it! So - I can’t use wedi with bues, etc - and it’s similar to oedd…so why would anybody ever use it?

Before I post this link, I’d just like to say I recommend actually buying a copy of this book rather than just using google - however, I’m at work and my print copy is at home so… here is @garethrking 's explanation in his (excellent) “Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar” :smiley:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0DY-CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq="bues+i"form+of+bod&source=bl&ots=dkcRVVDN2f&sig=n24x_Awetq-poTpcCNA7eQgy-so&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiUm5qno-LcAhVEYsAKHd0FBKoQ6AEwBHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q="bues%20i"form%20of%20bod&f=false

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Ha…I have that book in my hand! It’s an absolute marvel. I did have a quick delve but couldn’t find this topic - but now you have directed me - many thanks.

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Well, I learned something about English in that passage as well as Welsh. I never considered the subtleties of “been” before - very cool. Thank you @siaronjames (and also @garethrking)!!

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Not always, but can very often translate the English “have been”.

And just as in English, this can imply having gone somewhere (and come back), e.g. “I have been to Spain”.

“wedi bod” also translates “have been”, but I’m not sure if it includes the idea of having gone to somewhere (although I don’t think it does).

Open to correction, of course. :slight_smile:

I’m in Somerset, but fortunately I speak English :wink:

No, seriously, never heard that use of “to be” anywhere around here.

I would imagine that these days the use of that form is certainly becoming rarer, especially among younger generations (as has happened in the Forest of Dean where I have family), but if you want to hear it in use you can always - and this is a serious suggestion by the way - listen to some “Adge Cutler and the Wurzels” songs, sung in Somerset dialect :grinning:

Yes, I am a Wurzels fan :astonished:

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Seen them play a bunch of times either at the great Dorset steam fair or young farmers events I crashed; they are always a good laugh!

Hilarious! We lived in Devon and Cornwall for EVER and heard a LOT of ‘I be’ and 'Er’s got ‘un’ (Cornish for 'She has one!) Some of the sentence construction going on in the recent Poldark made me think of the Welsh language …‘I be going…’ well, I suppose they are both Celtic languages. But isn’t it all ever so fascinating?

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you might find this interesting then - (it’s about the ‘Forest’ dialect and quite long, but ever so fascinating!)
https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/BBC-Voices/021M-C1190X0014XX-0301V0

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Not to be left out, these examples are straight from the Isle of Wight Dialect Dictionary:

How bist getten on, you? How be ye?
I bean’t / I bain’t (I’m not)
What a gurt zote (great stupid) thing thee bist!
I be ver’ near shrammed (frozen), my vingers be like ice.

My late father-in-law was one of the last who spoke any of this old dialect, and in latter years he used to say that hardly anyone (bar us) understood him when he did.

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I was born in Gloucester - not a million miles from the Forest of Dean, and also my Dad often travelled in the forest area for work. Anyway, around Gloucester, you used to here “I be” “you bist” 'e baint" and that kind of thing, from the older people anyway.

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So was I… although it says ‘Caerloyw’ in my passport :wink:

Yes, the oldest generation of my Forest relatives has sadly gone now, but I remember it would take me at least half an hour to ‘tune in’ to the dialect when I met up with them.

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Wow! Greetings fellow Gloucesterite!

heh heh. That’s a trick I’ve missed. Don’t think mine expires for a good while now.

My parents had two older friends, a couple, who were “real Gloucester”. (We kids called them uncle and auntie, as you did in those days). He especially used to pronounce it “Glorstur” with a very long “o”.

My parents (who were northerners) didn’t allow me to pick up the full accent (and we moved when I was 11), but I think I probably had a slightly rhotic “r” for a while.

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My family come from Chipping Sodbury (yes it does exist) which was always more Gloucestershire than ‘Brizzol’. I’m nearly 65 now but when I hear a Gloucestershire accent i’m a little boy again.

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As does this village:

Curiously enough (considering that I lived in Gloucester from the age of 0 to 11), I have never been there. Even curiouser, because my Dad was always taking us to various places in the county and beyond, and he was quite proud of his surname, but never there.

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somerset dialect etc…is about as old English as you can get…Wessex English … think “du bist” in German and then “you bist” in west country … (another error is over the years people say devon and cornwall as West country…but the West country referred to Western Wessex…Devon and Cornwall clung on as Celtic kingdoms for a while)