Please could I check what I’m hearing in this sentence at approx 14:30? The prompt is:
“You could ask the old woman if she’ll speak slowly”.
I’m hearing:
Fedri di ofyn i’r hen ddynas os bydd hi’n siarad yn araf.
Is that right - bydd hi as the 3PS future?
Secondly, I hear ‘ofyn i’r’ rather than ‘ofyn iddi’r’ which I’d anticipated because of ‘gofyn iddi (hi)’. Do we revert to ‘i’ when there’s a noun rather than a pronoun, or is this just normal conversational contraction?
Thirdly, why is ‘Could you’ translated as ‘Fedri di’, which looks like the present tense (‘Can you’). Is it just that the meaning of ‘could you’ and ‘can you’ is very close in this context, rather than something grammatically significant?
Welsh often uses the future tenses for things which haven’t happened yet, as they are technically in the future, whereas English often uses the present for the same situation.
In your example, the hen ddynas might be currently speaking, but you’re wanting any future sentences to be spoken more slowly, even if it’s just the next one she utters.
Yes, you’ve answered your own question there - gofyn iddi hi but gofyn i’r ddynasgofyn i’r hen ddynas
Fedri di is translated as “you can”, “can you?”, “you could”, “could you?” depending on the context and intonation of the speaker. We do the same thing in English if you think about it - “Can you pass me the salt?” where really you ‘should’ say “Could you pass me the salt?”, but people use them interchangeably these days.
- gofyn iddi hi but gofyn i’r ddynas gofyn i’r hen ddynas