I’m halfway through challenge 2 of level 1 (so, right at the beginning), and I’ve noticed a couple of points of grammar that are so similar to English and simultaneously unlike other languages that I know that a part of me worries that they must be “bad Welsh”.
It’s probably silly given how much praise this course has reaped, but could someone reassure me that yes, these structures also exist in Welsh in the same form as in English and are used not only by learners unconsciously transferring their English grammar to Welsh but also by native speakers? (Whether because they’ve been in the language for centuries or whether they’re only entered it, perhaps as alternatives, in the past decades is less important – just that they’re accepted as natural and correct.)
Specifically, I’ve been worried about these three things:
1: Fedra i ddim sut i ddweud X yn y Gymraeg which sounds like “I don’t know how to say X in Welsh” to me in English.
This combination of sut + preposition i + verb-noun seems just like in English – but in Cornish, for example, I’d probably say fatel leverir X “how one says X; how X is said”; in German, wie man X sagt “how one says X”; and in French comment dire X “how say X” (without preposition).
2: Dw i’n trio cofio beth dw i isio dweud which sounds like “I am trying to remember what I want to say”.
Here I’d have Yth esov vy owth assaya perthi kov an pyth a vynnav y leverel in Cornish, where I was taught a distinction between question word pyth “what?” and relative word an pyth “… what … = the thing which”.
Also, as I understand it there, you can have Y fynnav leverel ger “I want to say a word” with mynnav “want” taking leverel ger “say a word” as a kind of object, but not an pyth a vynnav leverel – if an pyth is in front, then that’s already the object of mynnav and then you can’t add leverel directly afterwards but it would have to become y leverel “say it” or dhe leverel “to say [with preposition to]” (corresponding to something like ei ddweud and i ddweud respectively, I think).
And in French I’d say Je ne peux pas me souvenir de ce que je veux dire, also different from plain que “what?”. (But in German it’s the same as in English, except for word order: … was ich sagen möchte.)
3: Dw i’n mynd i ddweud rhywbeth sounds like “I am going to say something”.
Can Welsh really use mynd for future intention like this, without referring to walking or moving at all?
Cornish doesn’t have this (would use gul “to do” or mynnes “to want” for future intentions), nor does German, and French has je vais dire quelque-chose but without the preposition, closer to Dw i’n mynd dweud rhywbeth.
So, those are the questions I’ve had so far.
Thanks in advance for putting my mind to rest on these!
Also, is it just me or are the pauses in challenge 2 of level 1 (north course) a lot shorter than in challenge 1?
I did challenge 1 without using pause much if at all and thought things would be plain sailing to the end of the level - but found it all but impossible to do that for the first half of challenge 2 that I’ve listened to so far!