Na, taw, bod

Welsh
#1

I’ve been struggling with Level 2 Challenge 15, where the English “THAT” is translated in three different ways. I’ve seen some posts in the forum where other people have asked similar, but I don’t really understand the answer - something about taw means it’s emphatic, and something about a “pretorite”, but I don’t really know what that means in practice.

Here are the three examples from Level 2 Challenge 15 that seem similar in structure, but have different ways of saying “that”. How do I work out which one to use each time?

  1. You thought that I shouldn’t take too much of a risk
    O’t ti’n meddwl NA ddylen i ddim cymryd gormod o risg

  2. Are you sure that is the best thing to do?
    Wyt ti’n siwr TAW dyna’r peth gorau i wneud?

  3. I thought you said that you’d better not take too much of a risk
    O’n i meddwl i ti ddweud BOD well i ti beid cymryd gormod o risg

Thanks!

Chris.

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#2

Here’s the trick -

As in your examples:

  1. the word after ‘that’ is a verb other than bod, so in this case, that = na
  2. the word after ‘that’ is not a verb, so in this case, that = taw (or mai for Northern users)
  3. the word after ‘that’ would be a form of bod if it began a sentence on its own (i.e without the first part and the linking ‘that’), so in this case, that = bod
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#3

Diolch yn fawr! Defnyddiol iawn :slight_smile:

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#4

Just a slight addendum here, as otherwise parts of Siarons answer may lead to misunderstandings: na is there, because the second part of the sentence is negative. The equivalent for a positive sentence is simply y, which is sometimes left out in speech:
I think that you should take more of a risk sometimes – Dw i’n meddwl (y) ddylet ti gymryd mwy o risg weithiau

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#5

Good point Hendrik - I overlooked that bit!

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#7

It might also be worth pointing out that in sentence two, the “that” that TAW translates isn’t actually there; the full English (!) would be Are you sure that that is the best thing… and it’s the first that, which is often left out in English, that is the equivalent of TAW.

The that that is highlighted in the OP’s example is actually the equivalent of dyna.

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