“Tan” & “Nes”, both mean “until” if I understand correctly. Are they more or less interchangeable, or have I got it wrong? Thanks
Pulling this from my Welsh dictionary, the difference between “nes” and “tan” is whether the speaker is talking about a specific (and usually time related) thing (“tan”) or a more general ‘until’ (“nes”). So, “I’ll wait here until eight” would use “tan” and “I’ll wait here until they call” would use “nes”
I hope that makes sense …
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It does Sionned, thank you
Hello everyone!
I have just done challenge 13, level 1
I have a couple of questions, I would be grateful for any help:
around 0:50 - wnes i gyfarfod - I met
now, wnes is a past tense of gwneud, mutated because its dropped the ‘g’ - ?
but why does it use gwneud to form the past tense and not bod?
why don’t we say dw i wedi gyfarfod?
as we do with, for example, dw i wedi anghofio, dw i wedi dysgu etc.?
I remember learning French at school, most past tenses would use avoir (to have) but some verbs would take etre (to be) for the past tense, usually verbs to do with movement. Is it similar in Welsh, or am I way off the mark?
also, around 9:00, sy’n dy nabod di - who knows you.
but sy’n nabod dy chwaer - who knows your sister
so why do you use dy nabod di i.e. why say ‘you’ twice? but not for your sister?
again, trying to draw a parallel with French (apologies if that’s inappropriate, but I am trying to use how I learned one language to learn another, if that makes sense? trying to apply concepts)
is it like a reflexive verb e.g. je m’appelle - I call myself or je m’habille - I get dressed?
Diolch yn fawr iawn!
Using gwneud as an auxiliary verb is one way of constructing the past tense in Welsh, but it’s generally for single completed actions in the past.
wnes i gyfarfod = I met
dwi wedi cyfarfod = I have met
o’n i’n cyfarfod = I was meeting
The double/split pronoun is kind of optional - sometimes the second part will be included and sometimes it’s left off, much of which is personal/regional preference.
Both are mostly included either for more emphasis, or more usually when they are surrounding the verb itself - as in dy nabod di
You could equally say sy’n nabod dy chwaer di without any change in meaning.
You’ll also find that sometimes the second one is there but the first one is left out -
e.g. dwi’n cofio ti = dwi’n dy gofio di
I can’t comment on similarities with French (my O level was far too long ago and I haven’t spoken French since!) but I’m sure there are other people here who would be able to help with any parallels.
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As it happens, I was thinking about this over the weekend (as you do…) I too found this lack of parallel with the French quite confusing at first, but I think the problem lies with the French rather than the Welsh. They use the perfect tense where we in English would use what’s called the preterite. In other words, our “I saw” is expressed in French as “I have seen” (J’ai vu - sorry no French accents available today!) The Welsh would also use a preterite - Mi welais.
I think there is a preterite in French (this is what I was pondering) - there is a tense used only in writing, called the passe simple (which would then be je mangeai), and in my head that corresponds with the preterite (but it’s entirely possible that I’m totally wrong about that!)
As far as the Welsh is concerned, to me it’s easier to think about it in parallel with the English “I did X” structure (I did read / Mi wnes i ddarllen), with the “I was X-ing” structure for ongoing actions (I was reading / Ro’n i’n darllen). In both these the “auxiliary” (gwneud or bod) corresponds quite helpfully with the English equivalent.
I have no idea if that’s helpful or just confuses matters further! It’s just how I have aligned things in my own head…
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Thank you so much Siaron and Sara!
very detailed explanations form both of you, thanks for taking the time.
I see there are different ways of constructing the past tense, Siaron.
I guess ‘completed actions in the past’ is called the ‘past perfect’.
and ‘ongoing actions in the past’ is the ‘past imperfect’?
I had mistakenly thought wedi is a past tense of bod but I’ve looked it up and it’s actually a preposition that means ‘after’. Which sort of makes sense if you’re talking about the past.
Thanks Sara, I don’t know whether French can be compared to Welsh, or is it like ‘comparing apples to oranges’ but it sounds like you’re doing the same sort of thing I’ve been trying to do - looking for patterns you saw in one language and wondering how they apply in another language. I will look up about the preterite - I use all these things in English without knowing about them, they didn’t teach us English grammar at school. So I’d never heard of the preterite, but I use it all the time!
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That’s right - that’s what Spanish does, and the oldest French texts pretty much do the same; but then later on they stop distinguishing between the two except in proper literary language. Because they were talking about Ywain on the podcast Yr Hen Iaith, that’s got me struggling through the Old French version at the moment, and it’s full of things like Or vos ai antandue bien… Ma vie et mon cors me sauvastes - “Now I have understood you… You saved my life…” I’m not sure, but I imagine that literary French keeps up the clear distinction.
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That’s the thing about grammar - it’s just a naming system for organic entities that have evolved all by themselves. It’s entirely possible to make use of the system without learning the theory (a bit like I can recognise that the plant growing up my neighbour’s wall is somehow related to the hydrangea I’ve got in a pot on my patio, without having to know the whole Linnaean taxonomy).
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Question regarding owning/belonging/relating.
What are the main differences between eiddo / piau(biau) / perthyn
Any subtle nuances in use between?
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Sorry @brynle I’ve only seen your question today.
I tend to think of eiddo as property, so it gets used in expressions like ‘private property’ eiddo preifat or ‘lost property’ eiddo coll
biau (usually used in preference to piau) is a general word for possession with the ‘sy’ optional, e.g. fi (sy) biau hwn ‘I own this’, pwy (sy) biau’r siaced 'ma? ’ who owns this jacket?’
Note that you could also ask Siaced pwy yw hon? to establish ownership.
perthyn could also be used, e.g. I bwy mae’r siaced hon yn perthyn? but perthyn has a wider use showing relationships:
dw i’n perthyn i Dafydd, fy mrawd bach yw e - ‘I’m related to Dafydd, he’s my little brother’
so’r clawr hwn yn perthyn i’r pot - mae’n rhy fawr - 'this lid doesn’t belong to the pot - it’s too big.
wyt ti’n perthyn i’r clwb? - ‘do you belong to the club?’
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Are these both correct? If so, why is one fore (which I expected) and the other bore?
Dw i’n hapus i gerdded i’r ysgol efo chdi fore dydd Llun.
Be’ ti’n mynd i neud bore dydd Sul?
And for a bonus question, I’ve seen the “dydd” skipped, e.g. Saturday morning as “bore sadwrn”. Is that common, and if so is it more common in a particular region? Or does it change the meaning subtlety?
Ateb da iawn.
I would add that meddu - to possess and meddiannu - to possess/ occupy (take over) - are other good words! - although this also incudes possessing someone spirituality! 
meddianu’r eiddo - possessing the property
cymryd meddiant - to take possession
Please correct if the nuance is off
Also meddu / meddu ar rhywbeth
meddiannu can also be used to ‘take over’ or ‘occupy’ e.g.
mae’r protestwyr wedi meddiannu pencadlys y cwmni - the protestors have taken over/occupied the company headquarters
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As fas as telling one’s own story is concerned, both hanes and stori are completely interchangeable. But both words also convey different meanings in other contexts; so a stori can be a fictional story, and hanes also means history as in the school subject, or, for example, hanes Rhufeinig, Roman history.
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Sometimes there are simply multiple ways to express the same thing. Off the top of my head, English has two ways with any more and any longer, and Welsh just happens to have four (or maybe even more).
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To give some perspective … the phrase “Sut mae hanes” is an old and mostly unused phrase for “how’s life”/ “Hows the story”
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Sorry if I am asking too many but could anyone answer this one for me please? Both crop up in the course and I don’t know why one mutates and the other doesn’t.
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It’s not that you ask too many questions; sometimes questions just “fly under the radar” a bit, and then they kind of get forgotten. To answer the question itself, grammatically speaking only one of those is correct (with the mutation), as adverbials of time usually take soft mutation.
As for leaving out the dydd in bore and p’nawn, that is quite common and acceptable in day-to-day speech, and it doesn’t change the meaning (but it should be left in in more formal settings or written Welsh).
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