11:17: “They told us that they didn’t want” - “dwedon nhw wrthon ni nachin yw moyn”
How does this work, and what does it really mean? Shouldn’t a “didn’t want” have a “ddim” in it somewhere? And a “bod”? Like “dwedon nhw wrthon ni bod dydyn nhw ddim yn moyn”? What’s the “nachin” and how do I use it? Nothing like this is listed in the vocabulary for this challenge, so I can’t work out where it fits in and why.
Thanks!
The sentence you’re hearing is “dwedon nhw wrthon ni nag ŷn nhw moyn”.
The key word here is the ‘that’ - they told us THAT they didn’t want
The ‘nag’ here is being both a negative and a ‘that’ - you don’t have a ddim if there is a ‘that’ in the sentence which is negative, and bod is a positive ‘that’ with the ‘nag’ being the negative equivalent, so you don’t have a ‘bod’ either.
Sorry, I’m still very confused. I guess I need to revisit earlier lessons, as I don’t remember “nag” being introduced. So if I wanted to say “I didn’t know the man was here”, then “o’n i ddim yn gwybod bod y dyn yma” is wrong, and I’d say “o’n i’n gwybod nag y dyn yma” instead?
No, “o’n i ddim yn gwbod bod y dyn yma” is right because the second half isn’t negative - you only need the negative nag if the second part (the part after the ‘that’, either present or, as in this case implied) is negative. You’ve already covered the negative first part with the ddim.