Confused about "mi fedri di" in lesson 8 level 1

So doesn’t “mi” mean “me”? And if I’m supposed to be saying “if you could/can” then why am “I” in the picture? Also why did “ti” mutate? Why couldn’t I just say “medrai ti/ ti medrai?” or “ti fedrai/ fedrai ti?” Also google translate puts this in old English as “if thou canst” and I’m worried about sounding strange. Thanks in advance for any help.

  • a very confused Tyler

Some of this is above my head, but I know that google uses the archaic “thou” to suggest the informal singular version of “you” (ti in Welsh). OK, you wouldn’t normally use thou in English these days, but its equivalents are still used in other European languages. Try a forum search on Chi ti for more on this.

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Mi before a verb doesn’t mean ‘me’, it’s just shows the verb is a statement and not a question or negative. And it’s optional - you could just say Medri di, and it would still mean ‘you can’.

Ti becomes di after the verb-ending -i.

Google translate is officially rubbish - stop using it! :slight_smile: Ti/di is perfectly normal in Welsh and NOT old-fashioned!

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In this sort of sentence ‘mi’ is what the dictionary calls a ‘preverbal particle’ that you can’t really translate into English. It absolutely does not have anything to do with English “I/me” (even though my inattentive brain keeps thinking it does). It’s affirmative, so you can’t use it with a negative, and it mutates the following word, but otherwise you can effectively ignore it and begin translating/understanding from the next word. So Mi fedri di = ‘You can’.

As for why ‘ti’ becomes ‘di’… I’ve kind of got a feel for it, from the challenges, but not enough of an abstract understanding that I can (a) explain or (b) be sure I really know. I usually get it right (not always), but I’ll wait & see if someone steps in with a proper explanation :slight_smile:

ETA: Cross-posted with the more expert answer. Never mind!

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Oh, thank you!

Thanks for clearing that up, and haha I will :slight_smile:

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No, this helped a lot! It seems like we all need a grammar concept book for things like this, thank you bunches :slight_smile:

Hi Gareth,
Yes sorry about my confusing reply. I was half asleep at the time.
Its Thou that’s old fashioned, not ti.

Having said that, thou is still used up north. I’ll stop digging now unless anyone can lend me a shiny spade.

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Tha’s not wrong, chuck! :slight_smile:

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