Hi, I know someone can help me. I can’t work out when to use ‘Do’n i ddim’ or ‘wnes i ddim’. Help , please …
As I understand it, wnes (from gwneud) is something that happened once as a one off - wnes i siarad being like “I spoke” and o’n i’n (from bod) is something over a period of time - o’n i’n siarad being like “I was speaking”.
Happy to be corrected if wrong!
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Basically the difference between “I wasn’t” and “I didn’t”, however “Do’n i ddim,” is usually used in contexts around “states of being/mind” which are often assumed to be continuous even where they might not be in English. So AFAIK you won’t hear “Wnes i ddim meddwl,” even though in English you might say “I didn’t think.” It will be “Do’n i ddim yn meddwl,” which is “I wasn’t thinking.”
Thanks Greg, that’s great. I keep trying to work out where contractions come from. I didn’t realise that ‘wnes’ came from ‘gwneud’ and o’n i’n from bod. So in ‘do’n i’ the ‘d’ is indicating a negative statement as in ‘does dim’. I’m guessing.
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I was going to add this but didn’t want to overwhelm you, so I’m not a superfast typist, just have cut and paste handy!
Do’n is the first person past tense negative form of bod (to be) - Nid oeddwn in full. Wnes is the first person past tense of gwneud (to do) - Ni wnes in full, and it’s the ni, which is not (or rarely?) actually said aloud which causes the soft mutation from Gwnes to Wnes.
I swear so much of early learning of Cymraeg is about figuring out what is contracted or left out but still has an effect, and it’s confusing, occasionally maddening, nerdy fun. 
This is great, thanks Verity. I thought it must be something like that but I couldn’t work out the logic. I knew you guys would know. What’s an AFAIK? Oh, I just worked that out. ‘As far as you know’ … I hadn’t seen that before.
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Yes, I agree it’s Nerdy fun. It helps me remember though, so thanks for the further elucidation. When I first learned Cymraeg in Primary School I still remember “Yr wyf i”, “Yr wyt ti” and so on so I’m fascinated by the evolution of the spoken language. Big thanks again (just to transliterate into English.)
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Mutations on negatives are extra-confusing, because ni causes soft mutation on some consonants, and aspirate mutation on others. Meanwhile the positive particle fe (mi in the North) causes soft mutation, and neither fe nor ni is likely to be spoken (I believe mi is frequently spoken in the North, so that helps a bit!)
You’re welcome! I’m fascinated too. Have you found Gweiadur yet? It’s a web dictionary and I love the verb conjugation tables.