Going through the lessons lately i’ve noticed that sometimes in the past tense it’s used with another past tense verb and sometimes with a present tense verb. I don’t really know how to write Welsh, so sorry for the mistakes, but i feel like i’ve heard both versions used for things like “She told me that she wanted to speak Welsh”. Ddudodd hi wrtha fi bod/oedd hi isio siarad Cymraeg.
Are these two practically similar? In English, using “she wanted” or “she wants” here is pretty much equivalent, but there have been other sentences where it would be different, i just can’t recall what they were now.
I’ve also just started level 2 and it’s kicking my butt…
Probably got some impact from English happening here - I’d say that ‘Ddudodd hi wrtha i bod hi isio’ is correct, but you’ll hear other patterns, perhaps particularly if the speaker feels that something needs emphasising… very extreme case of ‘Not Needing To Worry’, though…
Sounds as though you’re pushing yourself in all the right ways with Level 2!
Hello.
Am I doing it correctly? Since I had the email not to use pause button and don’t repeat, do I not repeat the lessons or just the challenges? I can’t remember the lesson content very well in the latest. (I’ve done the 5 as suggested and when I went back to check I had definitely improved! ).
Hi Jamie - the improvement in Challenge 1 is the key sign, so well done with that…
With the pause button - you’re aiming for as little use as possible, but it’s vitally important that you SAY something (even if it’s wrong!) in almost ALL the gaps - if you can’t do that without the pause button, you NEED to use it.
But don’t worry - you’ll never feel you know the most recent lesson very well - because we haven’t had time to revisit the content (in a ‘spaced repetition’ pattern) over the next few lessons…
So right now, for the 6 month course, now we’ve checked that Challenge 1 felt better for you, I’m encouraging you not to repeat - or, at least, to make sure that you always do the challenges in the weekly email (if you want to spend extra time to run through them again, of course, that’s fine too, as long as you don’t get stuck!).
Efo is more of a Northern colloquial word. Gyda is the more standardised word, used widely in the South and also in written Welsh. They both mean with and are both correct, it’s more of a ‘context’ thing.
Strangely, I noticed “Efo” (not “gyda”) on a safety sign in the Caldicot School improvement site. Siaron will know, but I don’t think you can get much further SE than that.
I’m guessing that it was just a translation oversight or spare sign from N Wales.
Not necessarily wrong Welsh at Bangor Uni - Universities will tend to stick with the more formal, literary vocab and generally frown on essays being written in colloquial verbal forms, whereas SSiW aims to get you talking like a natural speaker. It was the same when I was at Aberystwyth - my Welsh speaking Gog friends found the vocab I had to use for Uni modules completely bewildering.
Mind you, they found me speaking gog with my weird hwntw accent a bit bewildering too!
I asked about “Osos” or something similar recently (I can’t find it now). Anyway, I’ve recently seen “Wsos” and “Wsnos/wsnos dywetha”. Silly question, but I’m guessing they are short for wythnos?
I have just discovered that the accent I called an umlaut is used in Welsh on an I to sort of double it. There was mention of diaeresis in an old thread, but I didn’t realise it was an actual accent, one which makes sgïo different from sgio! Clearly if I can live to my age without knowing this, it is not vital knowledge! But it seems to me, I should tell any of you who are in the same state of ignorance as I was!
Indeed @henddraig - earth-shattering knowledge! As a nurse, diaeresis sounds like a nasty tummy bug… but yes there are such things in many languages. Noël Coward always insisted on his little dots!
I’m very fond of the ‘to bach’ in Welsh words and names - ‘calon lân’, Siân, etc.
That one is very well known, but to live to my age, learn ‘reading’ Welsh well over 50;years ago and re-learn that twice, spoken Welsh ditto and then dscover ï was quite a shock!
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