I noticed a few things in Challenge 25 that I’m not understanding, even after running through it a couple of times:
When should you mutate penwythnos nesa to benwythnos nesa (in terms of the sentence structures used in this challenge)? One sentence response said, “Wela i chdi benwythnos nesa”, while another said, “Dw i ddim yn siwr os wela i chdi penwythnos nesa.” Mutating it in the first sentence makes sense to me, akin to how you mutate dydd to ddydd when saying you’re doing something on a particular day. What is different about the second sentence, then, that is causing penwythnos to not mutate? Or, am I misunderstanding why it mutates in the first sentence?
What does the contraction i’w mean in the phrase “rhywbeth i’w fwyta”? Sometimes I’m hearing it that way, but then other sentences clearly just say “i fwyta”, and I’m not picking up on the pattern of when ’w needs to be added.
This lesson introduces yndw as an affirmative response, while I learned it as ydw in Duolingo. Is that just a regional variant? If so, which would you say is more commonly used?
It’s so bewildering when I think I’ve learned how to say something, and then a new version comes up, leaving me doubting my understanding of any of it.
Yes, it should mutate to benwythnos but you will hear people forgetting to put the mutation in.
i’w is “i ei” but you can’t have i followed by ei, so the ei becomes 'w. The literal sense of “rhywbeth i’w fwyta” is “something for its eating”, whereas in sentences like “amser i fwyta” (time to eat), there’s no ‘it’, so no ‘ei’, so no 'w.
Yes, yndw is a regional variant. As to which is more commonly used, it depends which region you’re in. Both are perfectly acceptable.
This is why SSiW doesn’t only teach one version where there are more than one, because that’s what you get in real life and being exposed to the variations in the course means it’s easier to handle them when you hear them in the wild
Thanks so much for helping me out yet again, Siaron.
Whew! Okay, so at least I wasn’t misunderstanding the pattern. That’s a relief.
Aha! So, that’s it! {{{facepalm}}} I started to think it might be a possessive pronoun sneaking in there, but didn’t think *ei * would get abbreviated as ‘w, so then I figured it must be something else entirely and got totally confused. That makes total sense now.
Good to know. I definitely appreciate SSiW introducing variations. Sometimes, I just get tripped up wondering whether it’s a variation, or a different word or grammatical feature entirely. Clarification is very helpful.
That makes total sense now.