Patterns in auxiliary verb and inflected verb endings

Welsh General / Questions
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I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed before, but there are three main patterns to auxiliary verb endings and inflected endings, and I’ve compiled all of these in some nice, tidy tables for you:

One of my goals for the next year is to nail all of these helper verbs, and this makes it feel like a much more feasible task.

I’ve also started playing around with some exercises on WordWall, and would love to know which of these you find most helpful:

Let me know what you think!

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I had time to try your Wordwall quizzes tonight. Thanks for the quick review tools! I liked the latter two quizzes better. One thing puzzled me: I haven’t seen the 3rd person singular of medru or gallu without the “ai” ending: medrai o/hi, gallai o/hi.Is that an informal, spoken form?

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It’s actually formal. Present/future simple tense, ie “s/he can / will be able”. Informal spoken version has an -iff or -ith ending.

The -ai ending is for the conditional/imperfect simple tense, ie “s/he would be able”.

I highly recommend Gweiadur’s verb conjugation tables.

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Ah, got it. Thank you, Verity! I haven’t quite gotten that far in my studies, apparently (Uwch 2). I’ll check out the verb conjugation tables. I’ve been relying on Y Cyfeiriadur but some of the more formal/literary tenses +aren’t included.

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I’m glad you liked the Wordwall quizzes!

Regarding medr vs medrai, the former means ‘can’, the latter means ‘could’.

medr o/hi = he/she can
medrai fo/hi = he/she could

It’s the same with gallu:

gall o/hi = he/she can
gallai fo/hi = he/she could

Both medru and gallu are verbnouns, both meaning “to be able”, so can be inflected for the preterite (past) tense as well.

‘Would’ uses the bas- (N) and bydd- (S) stems, as per:

However, note that there’s some blurriness in Welsh between the different conditionals, but you’ll get used to those as you progress.

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Thanks so much for the explanation, Suw, I hadn’t thought hard about the distinction between “can” and “could” in terms of endings. I’m somewhat aware of the blurriness between conditionals. Being a Gog, I tend to use the Northern forms unless I’m speaking/writing to a Hwntw or writing quite formally. I’ll take a look at your website as well as Gweiadur (love the name).

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