Hi, can anyone tell me what the ‘ai’ in ‘ai eich plant chi ydy rheina’ means.
Diolch
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It’s one of those things that doesn’t translate word for word into English - the ai is there because you are asking a question.
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Diolch yn fawr
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Hi Siaron, sorry to bother you again but is the ‘ai’ short for anything? diolch, Mandy
No, it’s just ai.
It’s kind of a verbal question mark that is used when the sentence doesn’t start with a verb:
With a verb - ‘ydy rheina eich plant chi?’ = Are those your children?
Without a verb - ‘ai eich plant chi ydy rheina?’ = Are those your children?
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Diolch yn fawr iawn. Really helpful
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I’m very happy with the course so far; but I wish they’d mentioned that the form with the verb was also an option, because I answered exactly that based on what I learned in level 1 (old and new courses) and thought I’d got it wrong.
I was left wondering why, hence my forum search that found this thread.
I must say that the answer was far more fascinating than I expected! If I understand your explanation correctly, in Welsh you can signal a y/n question EITHER by moving the verb to that position (as with the verbs of many European languages or auxilliaries in English) OR use a question particle as in Chinese.
That’s really quite pretty!
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It wouldn’t be fair to pile all the options on too early! 
In SSiW, as you progress through the levels you’re introduced to different ways of saying the same thing and more of the subtleties 
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Oh, it can go either way? Like @martin-harte, I phrased it with “ydy” at the beginning the first time and I’ve never understood since then why that wasn’t right. I eventually shrugged and accepted that this was just different for some reason. It’s useful to know it can be used in both ways.