Currently I am listening to Level 2 Challenge 24 and at around 4:36 I hear the phrase in English as 'You’d tell me she didn’t want to answer etc and then I think that speaker one is saying bodd hi ddim yn moyn and speaker two saying bod hi ddim yn moyn… Neither of these makes sense to me. Am I just mis-hearing the two responses? I would expect to hear doedd hi ddim yn moyn
So which do you think it is on my part, bad hearing or loss of mental capacity?
The difference between the speakers saying bo and bod is nothing to worry about, just a variation in the way it’s said, but the reason you don’t hear doedd hi ddim is because in the English sentence there is an implied ‘that’ - “[that] she didn’t want to answer”, and that’s why you need the bod here rather than a doedd.
Thanks Siaron. Does this mean that there is no marker to indicate past tense versus present tense? What I am trying to understand is why the English sentence is in the past tense but the Welsh transcription seems to be in the present tense. Is it just that a listener would pick up the proper tense from the context of a conversation, perhaps?
I’ve been tripped up by that so often. Yes, it seems where English uses the past in this kind of construction, Welsh uses the present. A confirmation of our suspicion would be great.
This thread might help explain things Rules for using present tense to show a past action - #18 by Susanne
Thanks Siaron, I’ll definitely check it out.