Lots of questions!

Welsh
#1

I’ve got a lot of questions about the SSiW method, if anyone can help that would be much appreciated.

1.) How do we know, when more than one person/formal situation isn’t implied, whether to answer with ‘ti’ or ‘chi’? It seems that after Level 1, ‘ti’ isn’t being used anymore- should I answer with ‘chi’ from now on?

2.) Are there grammar explanations somewhere that I’m missing? A few times ‘arnoch chi’ and ‘amdanoch chi’ have been mentioned without any explanation of why ‘am’ and ‘ar’ have changed. Luckily I’m familiar with these from Dysgu Cymraeg, but I was wondering if new grammar is explained somewhere and I just haven’t found it? Surely I’m not the only one who had no chance of getting the sentence ‘oes eisiau rhybeth arall arnoch chi’ correct without some grammar explanations beforehand?

3.) I know this gets asked a lot but when should I move into the next lesson? I’m not able to get my full sentence out before the narrator starts talking more and more often now.

4.) I’m REALLY struggling to remember the dialect words on SSiW. For example, no matter how many times I hear ‘cloi’, I automatically say ‘cyflym’, since it’s the word I learned first, and what people around me say. Same for a whole load of words- ‘dishgwl’ (sorry, no idea how to spell most of these!) vs. ‘edrych’, ‘so’n ni’ vs. ‘dyn ni ddim yn’, ‘gwment’ vs. ‘cymaint’ etc. etc. The one big thing is using a differerent word order for ‘gyda’ sentences. I used to say (for example) ‘Mae mab gyda ni’ but I’ve been trying to say the SSiW version ‘Mae gyda ni fab’ but now I’m using BOTH sentence orders and it’s got me confused. Which should I use? -the Welsh that comes to me or the one I hear on SSiW?

5.) This next question I’m not sure how to explain… When we’re asked to say something like ‘I enjoyed it’, how do we know whether to say ‘Joiais i fe/hi’, when we don’t know what ‘it’ is?

6.) What is the difference in meaning between, for example, ‘Joiais i’ (my usual choice) and ‘Gwnes i joio’ ?

These next two questions I wrote down ages ago, so I’m not sure exactly what I meant, or what Lesson they were, but I’m guessing towards the end of Level 1:

7.) The sentence ‘Y peth nesaf mae eisiau i fi wneud’, Why is it ‘mae’ and not ‘bod’?

8.) Another sentence with a connecting ‘that’: ‘Dwedodd dy fy mam i wrtha i nagw (unsure of spelling again and just typing what I heard, sorry!) dy fam di ddim yn hoffi pêl-droed’. I understand that a ‘no’ has to be used to connect the two parts, but I’ve never seen or heard ‘nagw’ before.

Thanks again and sorry for the long post!

#2

*Just a quick though I had about queston No. 8. - is it ‘nag yw’ ?? In which case it does make sense to me!

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#3

Yes, I think you’re right here.

#4

Fairly often you can tell from the context, but you can use the one you want to practise. If you picture yourself talking to a single person about their child/children, use ‘ti’; if you picture yourself talking to a couple about their children, use ‘chi’. After something new is introduced, if there are variations, it’s fine to use the one you want to. It doesn’t matter if it’s different to what you hear back, as long as you understand what you hear and why it’s different.

No, with SSiW courses we try to avoid grammar explanations as much as possible and allow you to develop the skill of hearing something new/different and working out for yourself what the difference is. You can then make a theory about what you’re hearing and test the theory as you hear more examples. This is a great skill to have when you’re using your Welsh in natural situations where you’ll come across new words and structures all the time without any accompanying explanations.

We generally recommend that you don’t repeat a single Challenge more than 3 or 4 times maximum! If you need to hit ‘pause’ when you hear the female voice starting up to give yourself time to finish what you’re saying, that’s fine, but don’t feel you need to have everything perfect before you move on. You’ll get more practice of the same structures as you move through the Challenges.

Our advice is always to go with people around you say. If you’re hearing cyflym, stick with cyflym - you don’t need to change what you say, but just be aware that you may hear clou from other people in the south, and you’ll then understand what they mean. Same with the other examples - use mainly what’s familiar to you and what you hear, but occasionally use the SSiW version to give yourself more flexibility.

Just imagine a scenario for yourself - are you talking to a friend about a film, which is feminine? Then say Joies i hi - again there is no need to try to second guess what the response will be. In context you will know what to say, but the more you can imagine situations where you would use the Welsh structures, the sooner it becomes real and natural for you.

None - and you’ll hear both so use the one you feel more comfortable with.

It’s because y peth nesaf is the object of *mae eisiau i fi

Yes :slight_smile:

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#5

Thanks very much @Deborah-SSi.

This one I still don’t understand, but is it because there is still only one form of ‘bod’ in the sentence?

Is it that if there was another verb already, you would have to use ‘bod’?

Thanks again.

#6

It’s more that it’s a difference of word order, rather than joining two parts of a sentence - so you could say mae eisiau i fi wneud y peth nesa - “I need to do the next thing”, but it has more emphasis to change the word order and say y peth nesa mae eisiau i fi wneud - “It’s the next thing that I need to do”

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#7

I think I’m right in saying (!) that in formal written Welsh there would be an extra little word in there to mean “that” (“Y peth nesaf y mae eisiau i fi ei wneud” would be a formal way to write it), but most people drop it in speech (just as most people say “The next thing I have to do” rather than “The next thing that I have to do”)

But it’s entirely possible that I’m completely wrong about that … it’s been a while since I did my Gloywi course!

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#8

In 7 it’s because there are two different kinds of sentence that can both use “that” in English, but work differently in Welsh.

In something like “I know that she is going” we’re used to saying Dw i’n gwybod bod hi’n mynd and so we think of bod as “that”, when what the Welsh really says is “I am knowing her to be going”, with bod = “to be”.

In Y peth nesaf (y) mae eisiau i fi wneud, we’re saying “The next thing (that) there is a need for me to do”, and the “that” which we can miss out in English is the y that’s almost always missed out in Welsh: mae is “there is”, not “to be”, so there’s no need for bod.

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#9

So ‘mae’ isn’t a form of ‘to be’?

I am even more confused now to be honest so let’s just leave it as it is.

#10

Yes, it is! But it’s the “it is” form of the verb “to be”, rather than the “to be” form.