I am getting confused. in level 1 challenge 7. 'I wanted ’ is “o’n I moyn” but why not “nes I moyn” or “moynais I” because ‘you said’ is “dweudaist ti”
I’m not doing southern, but I guess it’s because “wanting” is one of those things that is regarded as continuous, rather than a single act (like “ate” “bought” “took”, etc), so we use a continuous past tense (the “o’n i” form) rather than the simple past tense (the “nes i” form).
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You say here o’n i’n moyn, ( I was wanting) because in Welsh this is an ongoing thing, not something that happens at a special time. There are other verbs , like gwybod ( to know) or meddwl ( to think) that use the continous form instead of simple past.
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Oh sorry Mike, you beat me.
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No problem Brigitte. Glad we agreed on the answer! 
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I have found this short video ‘How does the Past Tense work in Welsh’ very good for explaining when to use the 3 basic forms of past tense. It’s produced by Nicky, who learnt Welsh with SSIW:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hGh1c0cnC0
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Thanks for the explanation. I don’t know how to do a general thank you so hope everyone reads this reply.
Diolch yn fawr
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It’s a great sign that you’re already wanting to extrapolate from the other patterns - all you’re running into here is that Welsh doesn’t use all possible variations equally - so we give you the ones you are most likely to hear in ordinary speech… 
Diolch Aran, Another quick question. - if I sign up to 6 month course, you say that involves no more than 4 hours a week wherever I choose. How much time in addition is involved in the Thursday night get together online?
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That’s essentially up to you - at the moment, we’re making an hour’s Q&A slot available on Thursday nights, and then an hour’s hot-seating for speaking practice - but we’re hoping to add more nights soon - wouldn’t expect anyone to do the whole of each session!
Thanks for sending more people my way :D:D
Hi Garnet, You will get a feel for why you use one over the other - and this will come with practice. I remember starting and really finding it weird. Especially because unless you have studied English to a high level - then you’ll have learnt tenses quite informally, rather than learning about the technical structure of them. (i.e you know what sounds right rather than understanding exactly why a tense is formed in the way it is)
The video quoted above kind of expands on my point below - but for argument’s sake and simplicity’s sake - they loosely boil down to this…
O’n i’n anything.. - I was anything… (Happening for a period of time)
Wnes i/…ais i anything… - I did anything… (More of a one-off/one time thing).
I find a quick re-evaluation of your understanding of these in English helps, as it makes you realise why you say it the way you do in English first.
Welsh has foibles because if you were to do a like-for-like translation - Welsh allows you to say things like
“He was liking going running more”
Whereas if you said that in English, people would probably start to worry about you.
Give it a go, have a practice and I guarantee that in a month or so you’ll wonder why you worried!
Plus, if you ever mix it up - everyone will still understand what you meant - the worst that will happen is that they may think you were doing whatever you were doing for slightly less, or slightly longer than you meant.
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Diolch Nicky. I watched the video which was a great help. As you say, people will understand anyway.
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That’s OK Nicky, credit where credit due. I’ve got to like watching some of your videos, including your one year ‘celebrations’ - boy, you sure know how to party! Alan.
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