Speaking to the hen gi

Welsh General / Questions
#41

I’m so glad I stumbled upon this thread, as it covers two things important to me. Firstly, I wanted to know how to say “Shall we…?” and secondly, most of my Welsh practice, other than the wonderful SSIW lessons, comes from talking to the dogs. Mine are girls, though, so they mostly get “Merch dda!” or “Pwy sy’n merch dda?!” (which I hope is correct… dogs aren’t great at pulling me up on my mistakes)

So how does “Beth am…” translate literally? I know literal translations aren’t always very helpful, but I’m trying to work out the construction here. Is it sort of “What about…?”. And where does the i come from in “Beth am i ni fynd…?” Is it “What about for us to go…?”

Sorry to bump such an old thread, it just caught my eye.

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#42

Pretty much - or perhaps “for our going…?”
There’s been discussion on this on the forum before, which might help - Beth am I ni gael?

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#43

Yes I guess that as weve heard recently that the i is just joining the parts of the sentence like my “that”.

Also I was interested to learn recently that “beth” used to be “pa beth”. Which thing. Strange how they dropped the pa and kept the beth. You’ve gotta love learning Welsh :grinning:

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