Hyd yn oed-what’s the pattern?

Welsh General / Questions
#1

Level 3 challenge 4: just introducing hyd yn oed to us so maybe it’ll make better sense to me later, but I can’t work out how you decide where it’s going in the sentence - at the end of the clause or the beginning? It seems random. Is it just a case of placing it where it won’t interrupt the clause?

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#2

As always, the best answer to these somewhat advanced questions is to not worry about it, get out there, speak to Welsh speakers, and naturally pick up what they say.

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#3

That’s probably a pretty good rule of thumb - plus what Rob said about developing personal preferences over time… :slight_smile:

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#4

That’s helpful-I thought there was some grammatical rule, and I don’t need any more of those!

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#5

Here’s a bit of insight … although do not take this as gospel always

https://mymemory.translated.net/en/Welsh/English/hyd-yn-oed

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#6

Ah, something is clicking into place here…rather than split the verb (“you don’t even have”) which would be perfectly acceptable in English, you leave the 2 parts of the verb together and transfer the “even” to the back, giving you “you don’t have even”. Have I got that right? In other cases, use hyd yn oed just as you might in English.

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#7

I’d say even simpler than that: just put the “hyd yn oed” right at the start or end of a clause (the section before or after a comma or full stop).

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#8

That was the puzzle, though - deciding whether it belonged at the end or beginning of the clause. I think it might be down to aesthetics, in the final analysis.

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#9

That’s the beauty of it; you decide which end to put it and it can’t be wrong :slight_smile:

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#10

I suppose that what sounds right quite often is right.

However, the catch here is that one’s ear for what sounds right improves immensely only after actively listening to an awful lot of Welsh (or indeed any other language).

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#11

Yes. I’m sure that you are right. Ive haven’t heard hyd yn oed " being said that much to be fair, only on the radio. But it definitely followed the SSiW pattern.

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#12

Thanks for these helps, pawb!

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#13

Ran into exactly this problem today, and lo-and-behold, there’s a helpful post about it on the forum from a couple of years back.
I’m not (even :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) surprised.
Diolch!

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#14

Same here!

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