I’ve just started learning again after a few years. One thing that’s confusing me at the moment is that I’ve got to lesson nine on the course and so far there seems to have been no sign of roedd which seemed to be something that cropped up quite quickly when I went to a night class before. Instead there’s quite a lot of wnes i. My question is when would I use roeddwn i and when would I use wnes i when talking about the past?
S’mae Stuart,
Speaking generally, you can think of wnes i as “I did” ( the past tense short form of gwneud “to do”), and roeddwn i (or as the course uses o’n i) as “I was” ( that is the past tense of bod “to be”). There are a few wrinkles with usage though, but you will learn these through practice with the course.
wnes i fynd - I went (I did go)
o’n i’n mynd - I was going
o’n i isio - I wanted ( not wnes i isio note!)
Don’t worry, the courses will give you loads of practice using both of these ways of constructing the past tense (as well as short form verbs to do the same). Are you doing the new Level 1 course by the way? i am pretty sure this covers these aspects early on…
Hwyl,
Stu
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I’ve been doing the old one. Should I start on the new one? Is it completely different?
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Heia Stuart,
I would recommend starting the new Level 1. You can always do the old Course 1 later. The new course covers a wide variety of vocab and is very much built around having real conversations. The new listening practices sre innovative as well, and will do your listening skills a power of good! If you sre doing Northern, Level 1 is complete and Level 2 will start to be published very soon.
Oh, and well done for coming to the forum and asking questions, as that is exactly the right thing to be doing. Remember to post your progress as well, as its great to read about how people are getting on and succeeding with the language. You will not find a better way of learning Welsh than SSiW anywhere.
Pob lwc,
Stu
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Since you’re using on i, I’m guessing you’ve just started course 2? In that case, if you’re doing Northern, then I’d definitely suggest switching over to the new course. If you’re doing Southern, I’d suggest perhaps doing both, simply because the new Course 1 isn’t actually finished for Southern (not to mention that Southern still only has the first listening session). That said, it’s entirely up to you - while the new course is better than the old, the old is still really good.
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Haven’t started using on i yet on this course but learnt roedd before at night class.
I would suggest doing the new one.
It uses more tenses (including the “short form tenses” ) earlier, which is a Good Thing.
It will give you (an alternative way) of a natural way to use the language (especially if you are in the South) and certainly a better understanding of such sentences when you hear them.
So new courses all the way for me is my suggestion!
There are easily more than enough of them in the new southern course to give you a good grounding in the language.
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Hi Stuart - good to see you’re flying the Cornish flag - Roeddwn i’n byw yna pan on i’n ifanc. Roedd and Mi wnes i etc follow the same pattern as the imperfect and perfect tenses in French i.e Roedd is the tense of reminiscence as in my example above. It is used for talk of a general nature where there is no precise end point or when talking about what used to happen. Mi wnes i refers to a closed event in the past where someone does something specific e.g. Mi wnes i fwyta hufen iâ am y tro cyntaf pan on i ar wyliau ar lan y môr.
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