“She told me that she wanted to ask the old man.”
I was going to say, “Ddudodd hi wrthaf i bod hi isio gofyn yr hen dyn.” But I changed my mind because I heard the word ‘wanted’ past tense so I said, “Ddudodd hi wrthaf i oedd hi isio gofyn yr hen dyn.” But the correct answer was “Ddudodd hi wrthaf i bod hi isio gofyn yr hen dyn.” Now I’m a little confused when to use forms of oedd.
And, one more: “We all thought that they should help.”
I said, “Oeddwn ni i gyd yn meddwl bo’ dylen nhw helpu ni.” But the correct answer was, “Oeddwn ni i gyd yn meddwl y dylen nhw helpu.” How does the letter “y” fit in there? How do I know when to use that?
Thanks for any help!
~Priscilla
1 Like
Hi Priscilla, I try to answer your question and hope someone with more knowledge will correct me.
- Reported speech is sometimes tricky. What she said was: " I want to ask the old man.". In reported speech, in English, you have to change the present ( I want ) to past ( that she wanted ). But Welsh handles this differently. The content of what she said was present at the time she said it, so Welsh uses present = bod hi.
- “Bod " means " to be”, and it is used in sentences with “that” where you would use a form of " to be" without “that”, e.g. They want to help = maen nhw isio helpu, but: that they want to help = bod nhw isio helpu, so maen nhw is replaced by (eu) bod nhw. But they shoud = dylen nhw, is not a form of " to be", so you can’t use “bod”, instead you say “y” .
I can’t explain better or clearer and I don’t know the grammatical expressions, neither in Welsh nor in English, but maybe this helps you a bit.
3 Likes
Thank you very much for the help!