When saying “… that he” we use ‘fod e’. I’ve noticed that when saying “… that she” we instead use ‘bod hi’ even when it seems like it should mutate:
“gyda rhywun ddwedodd wrtha i bod hi’n moyn mynd heddiw”
Vs
“gyda rhywun ddwedodd wrtha i fod e’n gweithio gyda dy frawd di”
Secondly, why is everything softly mutated in SSiW? I’m used to positive sentences being unmutated, but I’ve not once heard “ro’n i’n”! Is this a colloquialism?
Last one, “pa mor hir” is used to say how long- is this interchangeable with ers faint/am faint?
AIUI, the first one is because there is formally a pronoun before bod, so the entire phrase should be:
fy ‘mod i (or bo’ fi)
dy fod di
ei fod o
ei bod hi
ein bod ni
eich bod chi
eu bod nhw
In spoken Welsh the first pronoun is often dropped, but the mutation remains (apart from bo fi, which is another variant…)
This ‘drop the thing which causes the mutation, but leave the mutation in’ is also the answer to your second question, at least generally.
The affirmative can either be without a mutation, or have the words ‘fe’ (SW) or ‘mi’ in front of them, and they cause a soft mutation.
Fe/Mi ddudes i or dudes i = I said.
But people very often imply the ‘mi’ or ‘fe’, leaving just the mutation. Now, I don’t know nearly enough to say whether this is the reason why o’n i loses it’s r, but the principle of ‘pretend the mutation causing thingy is there even if I don’t say it’ is very widespread in spoken Welsh. And SSIW goes for what people say, rather than what they should write every time.
Somebody more skilled will be along in a minute to explain the details…
In spoken Welsh, you’ll also hear people dropping ALL the mutations of bod in this context, so you’ll hear bo fi, bo ti, bod e/o, bod hi, bo ni, bo chi, bo nhw. However, the fully correct forms are what David has given you, and people do still use those too - with or without the initial pronouns, as he said.
With o’n i’n the contraction is going as far as it can - the full form can be used with or without the positive particles mi/fe, and can then be contracted
mi/fe oeddwn i’n > oeddwn i’n > o’n i’n
&
roeddwn i > ro’n i’n
If you’re used to using unmutated versions, that’s fine - you don’t have to change them. SSiW teaches commonly spoken forms, but that doesn’t mean you won’t hear other forms ‘in the wild’ - it’s just personal/local preference.
As for “how long”, the different ways aren’t totally interchangeable, and although you’d be understood if you used one instead of the other, there is a subtle difference to remember. pa mor hir = “how long” in terms of physical length e.g. pa mor hir yw’r ysgol? (how long is the ladder?)
whereas ers faint/am faint are “how long” in terms of time e.g. ers faint/am faint wyt ti wedi bod yn chwarae golff? (how long have you been playing golf?)
The way to remember them is to just think of pa and ers - pa means ‘which’, so “which length is it” and ers means ‘since’, so “since when is it”.
I never knew o’n i’n was a shortened form of oeddwn i’n, and when I’ve seen roeddwn/oeddwn i’n before, I haven’t understood them. I sometimes think that when Aran does introductions to this kind of thing, he could mention that, briefly.
As a side note, if my memory serves me correctly the north course teaches pa mor hir in the context of “how long have you been learning” - pa mor hir wyt ti di bod yn dysgu Cymraeg? and I haven’t seen ers/am faint at all. Is the distinction a south/north thing?
I think it might be a more personal thing. I was in Llambed last year, and was told that pa mor hir wyt ti wedi bod yn dysgu? is just… wrong. Oops, SSi got confused. Every native speaker who asked me that question used ers faint.
Now, it seems unlikely that Aran, Catrin, Iestyn, and Cat all missed that these words are incorrect, so I would guess someone says their version somewhere. But maybe not very many people at all?
I’m pretty sure it was in the Southern version as well, and I heard debates about it before!
Given that the official Welsh expression in terms of time, is ers/am faint, like @siaronjames and @verity-davey have said, for many expressions you might hear more English language-influenced versions here and there.
I guess a reason why they may have included that in SSiW is letting us know that:
colloquial Welsh is different than official/written/formal Welsh, and you may encounter variations of many expressions (not necessarily as a North vs South difference)
even when you don’t use the most correct one, or don’t remember the right word and try a literal translation from English on the spot people will almost certianly understand anyway
I think in general, with languages I prefer to know if a word is very unusual/on the border between right and wrong…but if you use the language there will be chances to learn more, and hear many different opinions on most things so I wouldn’t worry!
Mmm, I get that colloquial Welsh can be very different to formal (and that’s part of both the challenge and part of the enjoyment of learning it) but in this case it is a little curious, because if it is flat out wrong, then it’s wrong, and that’s a little different. I’d love to get @aran 's take on it.
