Hi
I’m struggling with how to put “mae gen hi” into the pluperfect. (she had had…)
“Roedd gen hi” would be the imperfect, but I can’t seem to find the right way to go beyond this. “Roedd gen hi wedi..” doesn’t seem right.
Any help welcomed!
Diolch
Mike
“Roedd wedi bod gen hi” - Maybe this would be the structure, but I am honestly not 100% sure about this.
I’m happy to stand corrected, but I was told that for all possession in the past, you just use “Roedd gynni hi…”
I think it’s just one of those differences between the languages.
Thanks for both of those suggestions. They both seem better than my original one. Now I’m wondering whether “Roedd hi wedi cael…” would work best, although if anyone else knows for sure of a solution using “gen”, I’d be interested to hear it.
Would
roedd ganddi’. Help?
It rather depends on what you mean by “she had had”.
“She had had to…” as in, “there was an onus on her to…” would be different to “She had had a thing” as in “She had had a thing in her possession”.
“She had had to sit” would be “Roedd hi wedi gorfod eistedd” where ‘gorfod’ does the job of ‘had to’ as in ‘was required to’.
"She had had a car’ would be “Roedd ganddi hi gar”, as in “there was a car in her possession”.
Either way, cael isn’t used and, as a note, cael is never used for possession. It’s ‘have’ as in ‘have breakfast’ - so it’s more ‘to get, receive, or have an experience’, not to ‘have a thing’.
Thanks for that great reply. The sentence was “She had had problems with her car”, so perhaps cael would be OK in this context? Roedd hi wedi cael broblem fawr…
And yes, I really should have given more of the sentence in the first place! “Had” is such a slippery word in English.
Heh, yes, in that case, cael would be appropriate, because you could rephrase it as “she had experienced problems with her car”, so “roedd hi wedi cael problemau efo’i char” or “gyda’i char”.
Roedd hi wedi cael problemau efo ei char hi.
Efallai, mae na ffyrdd eraill hefyd!