@aran in northern level 1 if my memory serves me right the following was used… Dw 'di bod yn dysgu am tua mis.
A fellow learner on a forum used this with ers and these are two of the responses
It’s more correct to say “Dwi’n dysgu ers” than “Dw i wedi bod yn dysgu ers”
2"Again, you should really say “dwi’n dysgu ers tua”"
Could you enlighten me please. These are the things that bother me. If as you say it doesnt matter and you will be understood then i can go with that. But it bothers me that people pick up on stuff like this.
Oh diolch! I remember learning that years ago!!! (Well, not about potatoes, I don’t recall the example I learned with, probably something more akin to Janet and John playing with a ball!
I was one of those conned into thinking that flag was only a jack on a boat, but I still called it a jack!! (Habit!) However, it shows how easy it is to fall for such rubbish, or am I particularly credulous?
NB I have been corrected by a friend from y gogledd who didn’t like what I had been taught in the south! Oh, and my pedantic English was a product of my snobby mother! I thought I had cast that off with the accent she tried to make me have (similar to that of one Elizabeth R), but I suppose some of the correct English stuck!
Oh, is some of the language policing snobbery? “We don’t talk like those people!” (That would only affect/effect? learners if the snobs were trying to make sure they didn’t sound like that!
I’d say it all comes down to whether you have asked for opinions on what you said is right or not.
I mean, “this will make you sound less like a learner”, “sound more like a natural Welsh speaker” are sentiments which would fit right in as a good thing on this forum and learning process as with any other learning process I’ve been on.
Of course, it all depends on the context. In response to a query it could be friendly and helpful, but someone suddenly breaking off a conversation to point out a mistake of yours and say that unasked would normally be off putting and unhelpful.
Similarly, saying “if you are serious about a language you will learn its rules and grammar” is technically simply a factual statement- you may pick them up purely subconsciously, but you will learn them. It’s the best way of learning them which is the question. And in answer to a query about the best way to learn, giving an opinion saying you should learn rules and grammar, in whatever way, is hardly off putting - but said apropos of nothing other than you making a mistake, it would of course be very offputting - depending on manner and context, even aggressively so.
Mind you, so could “you are wasting your time learning grammar” be in such a situation! But I have never heard anyone being unpleasant in saying either thing in my life- other than a couple of rather strange people who don’t count. What are they called in statistics? “Outliers” or something?
The thing is that on any subject, whether pedantry over language or anything else, people should realise that there are simply differences in opinion from different intelligent, sane people, and someone having a different opinion from your own, on any subject, does not automatically mean that that person is a lost soul, who has come to that obviously incorrect opinion because of a fault in his thinking process, and simply telling him the real truth will bring him to his senses.
I mean, I’m not Aran, so I won’t answer your query, but the “ers” thing is a case in point. If there was an actual query about the Welsh, or it was understood that there was in the context, they could have been being helpful- if they just broke off in the middle of a Welsh conversation to say it being completely unasked, it would be unhelpful - and that goes, both ways, whatever the accuracy of their answers!
Well precisely…in any language there are differences in dialects etc. In real life thankfully everyone is helpful. This is the only forum i post on as the arguments on how to say things on other forums just get ridiculous and i find as a result i get more nervous about saying something. I don’t mind getting things incorrect…my welsh is very basic after all.
Hence my question to aran. I’m assuming that wedi bod yn dysgu am tua mis is exactly how Cat would say it. In other words in how its said up here. In which case i find comments like x is more technically correct than y unnecessary. How many of us english speakers are technically correct. Very few probably. I just want to learn to converse. If its a dialect that everyone will understand as something others would use then who really cares.
I mean jan molby sounds like a scouser. Does it make his English any less fluent?
And being brought up in south Wales where we use the same soken word for here, hear, year and ear snd we say things like I’ll do it now it a minute, means i dont care if i end up sounding like someone from Nefyn or from Bala or anywhere as long as what I’m saying is an acceptable form.
Which i guess is my poibt about the pedants. Even when answering queries there’s very little acceptance that something they wouldn’t say is ok even if many others would.
Anyway. Reading through all this has been helpful in itself…bit happier now that i should actually just trust the SSIW way. I was having a crisis of confidence and i’m going to stop reading forums! Im pretty certain that @aran wouldn’t be teaching us incorrect forms…maybe technically incorrect but verbally perfect.
Oh for heaven’s sake. If you can find me someone who actually doesn’t understand what you’re saying if you say ‘Dwi i wedi bod yn dysgu ers’, I’ll buy and eat a hat of your choice.
My ‘aha!’ moment was up the page a bit, when you said you’d experienced stuff like this on a learners forum.
Treat that as a special case. You get three things that can go wrong in that kind of environment:
1 - well-intentioned speakers who think that because it’s a learners forum, you want everything you write to be proof-read to the most exacting possible standards
2 - pedants who enjoy the status they feel they get from knowing more about grammar than other people (and as Gareth said, sometimes they’re wrong!)
3 - learners who genuinely think that you won’t be able to speak the language until you master the grammar, so any (potential/imaginary/real) flaws in your grammar have to be corrected to ‘save’ you.
But while you can run into them in the wild, it’s really on message boards that they’re in their natural environment - the vast majority of people you actually speak Welsh to will be supportive and enthusiastic, so don’t let the pedants put you off jumping in…
I’ve seen some good articles from Rhiannon Coslett, but that one isn’t one of them - it’s a shallow, sweeping and broadly inaccurate piece of writing. Not worth worrying about.
You speak Welsh now, Peter. That means it’s your language too. Don’t let anyone put you off using it…
But from the information we have, they didn’t necessarily say that no one would understand it, and if it was a case of someone asking a question along the lines of “is this the best way to say… (whatever)” I can understand the answer being given there. If the context were just correcting someone without being asked, then yes that would be offputting. Otherwise, such things could be quite helpful.
Hey let’s not worry too much about the context etc. This post was just meant to highlight my own struggles with speaking and the successful outcome for me is i am.looking forward to the meetings i am going to next week. I msy even go yo another on wednesday now.
Over the past three months i have practised every day in some form or other. Passively listening to the radio. A few meetings. Speaking in a shop. 100 ssiw lessons with probably over half of them repeated. A few programmes on s4c. Written chats on facebook. Posts on facebook. And i was feeling i wasnt ptogressing. Away on holiday two weeks aho and this week i read some stuff and thought oh god i do that and im wrong.
Theres a guy on facebook who is fluent. Hes great. He ignores my mistakes and he comments on my welsh posts. Indeed we have s laugh i think which is great.
Learning is a journey. For various reasons which i don’t wish to go into, its also something very important to me but also something i find very challenging at times.
I feel reassured that im getting there which is important to me.
Me too! And in any case, who is to say that the first option is ‘more correct’? It might well be that the longer second option is modelled on the English structure, but I’m not at all sure that that makes it ‘less correct’. The progressive tenses in English, that English alone among the Germanic languages has, are no doubt modelled on Welsh/Brythonic, aren’t they? But nobody now claims that they are somehow ‘less correct’!
Whether on Facebook or talking to people, that’s the best way to go! Using what Welsh you have to converse with another Welsh speaker is both the aim of learning and the best way to do it- take every opportunity to do it!
oh good God, don’t do that! Remember that advice is given by all sorts of people no to all sorts of people. What is useful for one can be offputting for another, suitable advice for one person in one situation can be useless for someone in another. Just take that which is good for you and ignore the rest
And always remember you will be very get two people saying the same thing on any subject, from the completely ignorant to those considered experts!
Oh, just saying they weren’t necessarily being unreasonable. Hope it didn’t put you off.
Thanks for this. As a learner it can be discouraging when people do this. Naturally we want to be correct…which is silly as thetes more than obe way of saying things.
As i said pteviously this particulat poster mentions how qualified they are yo mske such assertions.
Oo Lord, my fat fingers are really causing chaos here! Deleting posts all over the place.
"The present tense is more natural in Welsh with ‘ers’ when the time period referred to extends to the present for the speaker - so, not “*ers pryd wyt ti wedi bid yn aros fan hyn? mirroring the English construction” - Pocket Modern Welsh Dictionary by Gareth King
Saying it is “correct” or “incorrect” rather than natural is very different of course, as is making the point that both will be heard and used. But it is a reasonable thing to say.
