Bore da,
I am currently doing L2 H24, and struggling to understand the 2 different Welsh versions of similar English phrases.
You’d tell me she didn’t want to go "----nag oedd hi’n moyn mynd, "
You’d tell me she didn’t want to answer “----bo hi ddim yn moyn ateb,”
Both are preceded by Byddet ti’n dweud wrtha i
My question boils down to “which one to use when”.
Diolch yn fawr.
I think this is similar to my query last week.
I don’t think you can work out which version the answer will use, as a literal translation would be “she doesn’t want to answer” I have similar frustrations with “you” where you don’t know until you get the answer whether it is chi or ti.
In English we use past and present. Before the event “Is he coming tonight? He said that he doesn’t want to come”
But during and after the event. “He said that he didn’t want to come”
I put this through Gemini AI and this is what it said:
Which sentence is correct “You’d tell me she didn’t want to answer” or “You’d tell me she doesn’t want to answer”
Both sentences are grammatically correct, but they express different temporal perspectives and contexts:
"You’d tell me she didn’t want to answer" uses past tense consistency. It refers to a past situation or a past habit (e.g., “In those days, if I asked about her, you’d tell me she didn’t want to answer”).
"You’d tell me she doesn’t want to answer" mixes a conditional/past modal (“would”) with a present state (“doesn’t”). It implies a hypothetical or habitual response regarding an ongoing or present situation (e.g., “If I were to ask you right now, you’d tell me she doesn’t want to answer”).
Welsh distinguishes past time in different ways to English, so with just a sentence out of context, you don’t really have any way of knowing which is expected. The English is ambiguous. Just say whichever you want, and if it comes back with the other one, you’ll know that it’s due to English ambiguity.
@Deborah-SSi How does Welsh decide if it’s past or present tense? I used the English example where before an event tends to be present tense, and during or after tends to be past tense. Does Welsh use a similar rule?
It’s just that Welsh tends to consider more what was said or happening “at the time” where English puts it all into the past, e.g.
“o’n i’n gwybod bod hi’n moyn dod” - literally, that sounds like “I knew that she wants to come”, but it would usually be translated as “I knew that she wanted to come” in English, even if it’s actually NOW that ‘she’ is standing there ready for an outing.
And if you find it confusing, have pity on the people learning English who can’t work it out the way we do it! I’ve tied myself in knots trying to explain it to migrants learning English, as their languages did it the way Welsh does 
I know a lot of the time if you ask a native speaker they would say that that’s just how it is.
Thank you for all your help, I really appreciate it.
Can I “nag” you for one more thing. In the course it’s bo fi ddim yn moyn but nag ŷn nhw’n moyn. Gemini AI (seems better than Chat GPT for Welsh) reckons that the nag is more formal, but I’d rather ask a real person 
So could you also say bo nhw’n moyn ?
I disagree that nag ŷn nhw’n moyn is more formal, firstly because “moyn” is spoken but rarely written in ‘formal Welsh’ and the “nag” pronunciation is also casual. I actually got ticked off for using it by a Welsh tutor from a “traditional” class, who tried to tell me that no one said that, when all the first language speakers I knew at the time used it constantly!
And yes - bo nhw’n moyn is fine.
That’s why I don’t totally trust AI. Its vigesimal numbers are also a mathematical wonder 
Thanks again.
You should see what it does with Basque numbers! 
Seriously, please don’t ask AI for any kind of factual information. AI can make errors and AI will make errors, so unless you know the subject matter well enough in the first place so that you could spot the errors, you can’t know if the answer is trustworthy. And because you’ll have to double-check the answer with a trustworthy source anyway, you can spare the earth a bit of wasted energy and forego asking AI at all.
Ask us, we are here to help 
I’ve found it very helpful to explain for instance why it’s sometimes i + verb sometimes i’w + verb. It’s saved me continually posting on here and making a nuisance of myself. If in doubt, I can always ask for the source of the explanation.
I used to use it to help me in my job writing software, and, yes, it made mistakes or did things inefficiently, but it would put me on the right track and save hours of Googling. It’s a good tool, but only a tool…until the rise of the machines 
Really, it’s not a nuisance. And if you are worried about “spamming the forum”, you could ask in our Slack group, where we have a channel for grammar questions. (And the Slack channel is more of a “group chat”, not like a message board)
The other thing is of course that AI is trained on posts like these, so you are instrumental in our “work” (that most of us do in their spare time out of a passion for the language) being ripped from its context and watered down and thus devalued. This might sound exaggerated, and the impact may not be as large in a text-based medium, but just ask a visual artist or a musician how they feel about generative AI.
I am sorry if that sounded overly judgmental, but I hope I made it clear that I am not a fan of GenAI, and there are alternatives available.
Thank you for your offer over the Slack channel. How do I find it, I’ve not come across it before?
I previously saw your post about Chat GPT and then as now you make many points that I can agree with. Chat GPT is awful for Welsh, I asked for something in the South Wales dialect and it used “mi” at the start of the past tense, so failed on first base.
I also agree about music and art, deepfakes and AI slop. But it is handy for creating images in Anki to help remember words.
TBH, if it stole any of my coding or anything I put on here, I would take it as a compliment. Just as when my colleagues reused my code.
Anyway, I’ll get shouted at by the mods for going off topic.
Thanks again for the offer and I’m always happy to listen to other views, and hopefully find areas of agreement 
If you send an email to admin@saysomethingin.com with “WSP” or “Welsh Speaking Practice” in the subject line, you’ll get an invite link. You’ll also need to either download the Slack app (available on Android and iPhone), or you can also access it on PC/laptop via browser interface.
Once you have access to the “workspace” you will be automatically added to a few channels, and then you can add the channel #grammar-questions. See you there 
Not to mention the HUGE environmental cost of running AI models. Water & energy costs are WAY higher than simple searches.