Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

diolch - the echoing is interesting and “gyda fe” substitutes for efo fo as well I guess.

Yes - rhywbeth i fwyta 'da fe :slight_smile:

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Admit it now Gareth: you just made up that verb didn’t you?

:wink:

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How I wish I could tell you that I had, Mike… :wink:

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Hi Gareth,

By coincidence I have stumbled this week over the fact that ‘cam’ as a prefix and standalone can mean mean wrong or wrongful…

Dw i wedi cael bai ar gam - I’ve been wrongfully blamed

Rwyt ti wedi cael cam - rhywbeth fel ‘you’ve been misdone by’

…as in camgymeriadau hefyd wrth gwrs

…I’m not sure how widely it can be used though - it would be interesting to know - I suspect it only works on the words it works on!..and therefore you need to remember anyway.

However, things like pre-fixes and endings are really useful and interesting at the stage I am at now - as any word you know can turn into 6 more (say). Very useful when climbing the vocabulary ladder.

Thanks in advance, as ever,

Rich

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Exactly Rich - it’s very like the English prefix mis-, in that you can’t just stick it onto any old verb. Best approach is to learn them as you encounter them. Make a little list, even! :slight_smile:

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I see ok. I suspected as much! That would just be too easy wouldn’t it and no fun at all! :smile:

Thank you

Commendable attitude, Rich. Spot on!

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I have seen verbnouns mentioned a few times and I have asked myself if they can work like gerunds in English, and I figure now is as good a time as any to ask! :wink: I’m still not quite clear on that point @garethrking - and in fact, I really have no idea what a verbnoun even is… other than the obvious reference… but I don’t know how to explain or apply it. Diolch yn fawr!

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Yes Sasha - a verbnoun is indeed the same thing as the English gerund, that is to say: a noun expressing the action of the verb.
And its use in the two languages is pretty similar. Indeed, the characteristic English continuous tenses (I am going, etc) are plainly modelled on Celtic, i.e. [verb to be] + [gerund/VN], with the small added detail of a linking yn in Welsh. And like the gerund, the VN can be used as an actual noun:

Gall gyrru’n rhy gyflym fod yn beryglus
Driving too fast can be dangerous

All good fun. :slight_smile:

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When I try to think of challenging new sentences from scratch, I often get stuck.
I was wondering how to say not to.

I know that how to say is sut i ddweud. (I also remember that in other sentences like dw i’n moyn dweud there’s no i, but not sure of why, so I’m assuming I need one here) :

He goes into the other room to hear what they want - Mae’n mynd/Ma fe’n mynd mewn i’r ystafell arall i clywed beth maen nhw’n moyn.

In SSiW all the examples with not to start with I’d rather (Well da fi beidio).
But I guess beidio is what I need here, so I’m going to try like this:

He goes into the other room not to hear the noise - Mae’n mynd mewn i’r ystafell arall, i beidio clywed y swn.

Or with different vocabulary and things I might mess up, so I can get more corrections in the process :grin:

He thought of leaving his shoes outside, not to suffer the complaining about - Meddyliodd e am gadael ei esgidiau tu allan, i beidio diodde ei achwyn ar -

p.s. they sound awful in English but I’m actually starting from Italian then mix it with recycled parts from Welsh sentences, and this is what I get! :grimacing:

Awesome! Thank you so much for clarifying that for me and giving examples! Diolch yn fawr iawn! :grinning:

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I’m slightly confused in Level 2 Challenge 22.

In the written vocabulary list it says, .‘He didn’t tell me’ is ’ wnaeth e ddim dweud wrtha i. and you didn’t tell me is wnest ti ddim dweud wrtha i

In the examples of sentences it is ‘Ddwedodd e ddim wrtha i’, and Dwedest ti ddim wrth i
and that is what Iestyn and Cat appear to be saying…

Can it be either?

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Hi @bizzielizzie,

Ok - it’s possible it’s one way in the notes and the other in the conversation - I’m not sure but either version means the same thing - they are interchangeable.

One of the things that SSIW tries to do is give you experience of the different ways people might say the same thing. You might have a preference in terms of the way you like to say it but for understanding others it’s really useful to know what the options are.

This is an example where ‘wnaeth e’ which means ‘he did’ ( past tense of gwneud, to do) is used to give you a past tense…and this is quite a nifty technique as you can just tack your standard verb onto it eg dweud…wrtha i, and it gives you the past tense of it. Literally ‘he did’ say - or tell in this case, taking the ‘wrth’ into account.

Dwedodd skips the ‘he did’ aspect and puts the past tense directly onto the verb, making it ‘he said’ or ‘he told’ in the context of the ‘wrtha i’ / told me. From a learners point of view you need to know the verb stem - how to shorten the verb, to use this option - dwed in this case - to add the past tense ending onto…so In theory a little bit more memory required.

Both used and understood the same.

You can pull the same trick with the future of gwneud - it’s a cool thing - you can say ‘I will do’ …’wna i’…and add your standard verb. Handy!

Rich :slight_smile:

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Thank you, Rich. I thought that was probably the case but wanted to check. Thanks again.

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Hi, bizzielizzie,
Its easy to miss on the audio, but Iestyn explains the full “wnaeth e ddim dweud” (he did not say) and also the short “Ddwedodd e ddim” (sort of - “said he not”) at about 12:46 into the sound track.

Edit: actually I think he explains the short form first.

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It’s a good link between things isn’t it, but not quite sure myself how to use it correctly. I tend to find peidio comes out when there’s simply no other option that would work - when using dim or a nag form doesn’t mentally fit.

In those cases you used, I think I would have said them in different ways anyway, but I could imagine when speaking going for my default er mwyn and then peidio would naturally follow which might be wrong, but er mwyn comes naturally and seems to buy me thinking time. So er mwyn iddo fe beidio would probably be what I would try to say as a link, but the er mwyn is probably superfluous and if that’s wrong then I need to do some intensive work to correct it.

I need advice here as well to help with the fine tuning more than anything else.

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In the meantime…this should be a real quick one. :grin:
I found this sequence in an interview:

Doeddwn i ddim yn gwybod….- I didn’t know
That I believe is the extended version of SSiW Do’n i ddim, so I guess it’s alright.

Fi jyst yn gwybod y… - I just knew
How come this fi in the beginning? And how can you tell it’s a past tense?

Dyna i gyd roeddwn i’n gwybod. - That’s all I knew
This again seems consistent with things I’ve seen before.
But just wondering if I wanted to say:
All I knew was… - I gyda roeddwn i’n gwbod doesn’t sound quite right to me, but maybe it’s a wrong impression…

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Yup, that… :slight_smile:

You can’t… :slight_smile: And that ‘fi’ is just a very slangy kind of thing.

You’d be understood with ‘i gyd roeddwn i’n gwybod’, but ‘y cwbl o’n i’n gwybod’ sounds a bit more natural to me - might be different down south, though… :slight_smile:

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For the “Fi” that is from the fornal yr ydwyf i, which gives all the variations like rydw i, rwy, dw i etc and Fi is just another variant and very common where I live.

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