Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Ooh, blimey… that’ll be a tricky one to remember. Thanks again Siaron!

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It’s an interesting one isn’t it… when things have a past tense verb thrown at them like that in English…they are having (or have had) an action done to them…

Eg
The phone is kept safely
…so I don’t get left behind
I was brought up in mid-Wales
I was born in Brecon

…if you re-arrange the English so that the subject is a having a present tense action done to it, then the Welsh ‘translation’ drops out for free…

The phone is having it’s keeping, safely
…so I don’t get my leaving, behind
…I got my upbringing in mid-Wales
…I got my birth in Brecon

It always uses cael. Present tense for has/ having/ get…and past tense for had/ got.

Initially this sounds ‘odd’ :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: but actually you can train your brain so that you think of the English this way :upside_down_face:

I think @gisella-albertini sort of told me I was crazy when I’ve said this to her before…

…so I’m aware that this may or may not help! :smile:

Rich :slight_smile:

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Funnily enough, I don’t mind these two and have encountered them before (ges i fy magu, ges i fy ngeni) but I couldn’t see how to apply that to the present tense idea of using a verb in the past tense (the phone is[present] kept[past]).

English is a very strange language when you look at it critically.

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Oh yes, it was a phone, not a box(!)…I’ve edited it…,

…yes, I think there is a very good case for saying Welsh is more consistent…which means when you understand it - it is easier!

Rich :slight_smile:

Seeing as we are getting s bit technical today - When would you use “Croesawy”?
Please don’t say never :grin:. I thought it was a bit old hat now, but Ive seen it used on recentish FB posts, admittedly by slightly formal type users. Any thoughts?

Croesawu is the verb “to welcome”.
One example could be “bydd hi’n plesur mawr i croesawu chi i gyd i Gaernarfon” (It’ll be a great pleasure to welcome you all to Caernarfon).
So you’d use it when you need the verb form.

What some find confusing is thinking that croeso is the verb (because lots of verbs end in ‘o’!) but this is actually the noun or adjective form.
e.g. “bydd hi’n plesur mawr i rhoi croeso cynnes i chi i gyd yng Nghaernarfon” (It’ll be a great pleasure to give you all a warm welcome in Caernarfon) :wink:

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Great thanks, Siaron. So, “Croesawy”: is that just a localisation? There seem to be loads of examples on social media - eg:
Great pleasure to welcome # Anglesey pupils to # angleseyday16 / Pleser mawr i croesawy disgyblion o Ynys Mon heddiw
PS: the use on social media seems to be mostly in Bangor, Caernarfon & Anglesey posts. I’m not sure if that’s of any significance.

Just to hijack this slightly (because the question came to me when I saw “Croeso i Gymru” when crossing the bridge this evening) but is it common to say “You’re welcome!” in Welsh in a fuller way than simply “Croeso!”, which is all I’ve ever seen? Do people say “Dych chi’n groeso” (I presume it mutates, as a noun?) at all? Or is it always just “Croeso”?

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yeah, reckon so!

Yes, I have heard the full version, but I’d say it’s far less used than just “Croeso” (or indeed “Croeso Tad” for “You’re extremely welcome”)

Hello again.

This time I’m wondering about “ef” and “fe”.:thinking:

I wrote “Ysgrifennwch fe!” for something, and it was corrected to “ysgrifennwch ef!” Is “ef” the written form? Is “fe” not permissible as an object pronoun in this way? Thank you.

yes, that’s the written form, although you do sometimes hear it in speech too. It’s more common to hear ‘e’ rather than ‘ef’ though.

Not really in this case. The clue is that it doesn’t ‘flow’ as well as ef (but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be understood if you did use fe), but as I said above, just ‘e’ would work - “Ysgrifennwch e!” - certainly in speech and probably in most written cases.

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Thanks @siaronjames. I get that “ysgrifennwch ef!” flows better since the imperative ends with a consonant sound. If I was using, for example, “dere” instead, would “ef” still be used? Because to my mind in such a case “fe” would be easier to say, though I know that I have often been slightly bewildered over things that my Welsh teachers have said are so in the language for ease of pronunciation.

Well not in the case of ‘dere’ because you probably wouldn’t follow the command “come” with “it”, but I see what you’re getting at - a command form that ends in a vowel (i.e. singular form commands rather than plural/formal forms that end in -wch).
Yes, for things like “Tria fe” (try it), “cofia fe” (remember it), fe would sound better than ef.

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Thank you! Okay, I think I’ve got it.

By the way I think i’ve heard Beca (Lynn-Pirkis, not SSiW resident one :smiley: ) say
a dyna fe translated as and that’s it in the subtitles yesterday.
Did I hear it right or there’s something missing?

p.s. since this series is about to expire, I hope there’s another one coming back in the International S4C section of Clic…! :sunglasses:

yup, that’s it! :wink: also could be translated as and there it is.

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Sorry if this is a silly one, but how do the pronunciations of “bwyd” and “bywyd” differ?

" 'na fe" is one of my most commonly used interjections. I use it for “that’s it”, there we are", that’s right", “that’s the one” and sometimes when there’s no need to say anything at all. :laughing:

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“bwyd” has an “oo” sound at the beginning, so “boo-wid”.

“bywyd” has an “uh” sound, so “buh-wid”.

It’s a subtle distinction.

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Booeed as 1 syllable.

Buh-wid as 2 syllables.
:grinning:

ETA, sorry @margarethall, you beat me. :wink:

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