Level One - Challenge 11

Me again. Now on challenge 11 and confused again.

The young man = Y dyn ifanc
The young man wants = Mae’r dyn ifanc isio
The young man who wants = Y dyn ifanc sydd isio

Please can you tell me what the Mae refers to and how do i know when it’s needed and when it isn’t

Many thanks

‘Mae’ is the equivalent of ‘is’ in English, so it’s like you’re saying “The young man is wanting” - with ‘mae’ for ‘is’ and ‘isio’ for ‘wanting’, but of course English doesn’t say it like that, so we get ‘wants’. Welsh also has a different order for the words, so the ‘mae’ comes first.

In the last example, you’ve got a snippet of a sentence, something like “I know” y dyn ifanc sydd isio “to buy a new car” - you’re translating the bit in the middle, and the ‘sydd’ here plays the role of ‘who’ in English.

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Hi @jayne-hitchen

Ok so there are a few potential questions in there so…

The Mae indicates a normal sentence which is in the present tense…

Mae’r dyn ifanc yn rhedeg

…means either ‘the young man is running’ or ‘the young man runs’ - the mae is the ‘is’ in the first version but creates the sense of the present in both.

Without a verb you just have a phrase not a sentence eg. Y dyn ifanc = The young man.

R/oedd y dyn ifanc yn rhedeg

…gives you ‘the young man was running’ - roedd similarly gives a past tense - to give a different example.

Mae and Roedd are the forms when you want to talk about a ‘thing’ or he or she - in a sentence. If you wanted to say I am running you would say ‘dw i’n rhedeg’ - so Dw i takes the place of Mae + thing, in this example.

Normally sentences start with the verb eg Mae or Roedd In Welsh. (They can be reordered for emphasis… the fact that this different order is relatively unusual drawing attention to the thing at the beginning not being a verb eg Rich ydw i = I am Rich).

If you put ‘sydd’ after something, it allows you to add some information about that thing eg ‘the young man who is talking to the lady in the green blouse’. Sydd also indicates present tense - ie he is talking to her now - oedd in this context would allow you to say he was talking to her.

But…don’t worry - SSIW will run you through these until you don’t even think about it anymore - you will have a feel for what is right.

With luck I answered your question somewhere in there but let me know! :smile:

Rich :slight_smile:

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Ha @Deborah-SSi has answered already :wink:

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Thank you both, that does make a bit more sense now. And as you say the further along I get the more naturally it will come. Many thanks

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You explained that really well for.me! Massive diolch yn fawr!

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Great! What is the ‘for me’ link in you post - I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not?

Rich :slight_smile:

totally unintentional! It was meant to be…for me Really good explanation anyway of a very tricky concept that has bamboozled me on and off for ages :slight_smile:

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