Identification q&a's

Heyo, just a bit confused about how answers to identification questions like “Beth yw hwn?” work and how to talk about a given object afterwards as part of my working out how WAYK would work with Welsh.

AFAIK questions about someone’s or something’s identity use run along the lines of such as these:
“Pwy wyt ti?” Who are you?
“Beth yw dy enw di?” What’s your name?
“Beth yw hwn?” What’s this?

And then someone might answer:
“Heddwas ydw i.” I’m a policeman.
“Sian ydw i.” I’m Sian.
“Cwpan yw hwn.” This is a cup. or maybe “Mae cwpan yn hwn.”

Am I right so far? And then how might one question such statements? Maybe as:
“Heddwas wyt ti?” You’re a policeman?/Are you a policeman?
“Sian wyt ti?” You’re Sian?/Are you Sian?
“Cwpan yw hwn?” This is a cup?/Is this a cup?

What about where one wants to change emphasis, if wanting to say “This is a cup?” or “You’re Sian?” Would word order be changed? And how?

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WAYK?

As you know from the lessons, this isn’t really our kind of approach - but very briefly, you’re good on your questions if you just add ‘Ai’ to the front - so ‘Ai heddwas wyt ti?’ etc.

As for the changing emphasis - I don’t want to push you in the direction of any non-existent ‘rules’, because it won’t always be a neat match to the English - but you could certainly say ‘Ti yw Sian?’ in that kind of context. :sunny:

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“Ti yw Sian?” Not “Ti wyt Sian?”

And then what happens with negative identification sentences? Would you use “nag” as in “Heddwas nagw i”? Or would you use “dim” or even “nid”?

WAYK is another pedagogical method btw. I’ve just been fiddling around with SSI and WAYK for different languages.

I would say “Nid heddwas dw i”

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Yes, ‘Ti yw Sian’.

With negatives, you can do lots of different things - Louis has given you one option there - you’d also hear colloquially ‘Dim heddwas ydw i’…

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Thanks for both your guys’ answers, they’re really quite useful. :smile:

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