If you....I would

Having completed Courses 1-3, and now having a bash at the Levels, I need help with the ‘Taswn i, …fasw ti…’ structure of Course 2 and the ‘Taswn i…, fydden i…’ of Level 2. The structures seem to mean much the same to me. Are they interchangeable? What am I missing? Sian

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I was recently driven to look into this, and discovered that there are two interchangeable forms of the conditional. So I think you can just use either version. (I even took a photo of a grammar book for posterity!)

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Diolch yn fawr iawn for that superb and comprehensive response! :star: :star2:

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Which book is that? I feel like I need a book!

I will dig it out later and let you know.

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It is the same (simple) grammar book I have! Gramadeg Cymraeg Cyfoes - Contemporary Welsh Grammar
Comes from Gwasg Gomer; mine is a relatively old copy (ca. 2000) but I’m sure it is still available.

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http://www.gomer.co.uk/index.php/books-for-adults/dictionaries-and-language-books/gramadeg-cymraeg-cyfoes-contemporary-welsh-grammar.html

or
http://www.gwales.com/goto/biblio/en/9781859026724/

or

or (US)

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Simple is exactly what I need :slight_smile: Diolch!

It is in excellent book- but I can’t see it without thinking of sitting in a classroom waiting for the bell to go! It’s been “contemporary” since 1976 :blush: and was used in classrooms (mine, anyway!). Wonder if anyone else here remembers the weird hypnotic “receding squares” cover it had then?

Excellent book, very good, in my opinion well worth getting even if I can’t bear to look at it myself!

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A diolch yn fawr iawn o fi! All is revealed! I need that book… not least to fix my spelling. Sian

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Further to this, am I saying them wrong or do “byddwn i” and “bydden ni” sound the same?

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You will hear both “bydden i” and “byddwn i”, (especially in the South) and yes, “bydden i” sounds pretty much the same as “bydden ni” :blush:

This is something I have been confused about recently, so thanks for the help - well timed. :slight_smile:

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In the north, there’s a very small difference, but I wouldn’t expect people to pick up on it in normal conversation, where the context would usually point them in the right direction… :sunny:

Does Gramadeg Cymraeg Cyfoes focus on North or South Welsh or does it cover both? Mezx

It focuses on Welsh.:blush: It is therefore very useful for anyone learning Welsh, whether in the east, west, left, right, upper, strange or charmed part of the country. :blush:

Seriously, it simply tells you Welsh grammar. It doesn’t give a really in depth discussion of various dialectical differences, but it will teach you Welsh grammar which is understood wherever you are. :blush:

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There are alot of dictionaries out there written by South Waleans that are meant to cover ‘Welsh’ but when you look closely at them, you find certain NW terms are absent & only the SW equivalents are present and this can be rather misleading.

What dictionaries in particular do you refer to? I’ve found that many dictionaries often have only the ‘standard’ form in them. The better the dictionary, the more words from various sources of all have, of course! Whether the ‘standard’ word is more used in North, South, East or west will differ from word to word, of course! I’ve heard some people making exactly the same complaint, but in mirror image of Northern bias! But as I say, I’ve found the above, myself.

Ha ha, please let me know which ones have the northern bias and I will get one of them :blush:. Every single welsh dictionary in my local bookshop is written by a south walean & the shop owner herself tells me that none of them are very useful for north waleans. Even if they list the nw words, alot of them dont even say nw or sw by them so you can differentiate. Only one dictionary I’ve found does that but if you look up a word you know is different, you dont always find the nw version.

I also live in what is locally nicknamed the ‘e’ county so dach is dech, dan is den etc… I dont think there’s a single book in existence that covers my local tongue.