Sorry, quite a few questions from me again! Feel free to let me know if these’d be better in a big post.
Would the sentence Anghofiodd hi hi work for She forgot it? I think the course says Wnaeth hi anghofio hi and I wondered if repeating hi is ‘allowed’ grammatically, or if I’m missing a word or two in the short-form version.
Am I right in thinking that e (‘he’) always becomes fe after a word ending in a vowel?
If you wanted to say you’ve done something ‘just now’, is gynnau a good choice? I’m not sure where it overlaps with newydd+verb
This one is a bit hard to explain but he we go: is there a way to say ‘actually’? I’ve been thinking about how much I use ‘actually’ in English and I was wondering if using wir works in Welsh sort of similar? I seem to remember hearing Ydy wir? for ‘Is it really/actually?’
I know I’m trying to translate a bit too literally here from English, but the dictionary gives wir from gwir as ‘indeed’ which is a word I don’t think I’ve ever used in 30 years of speaking English
Maybe something like:
A: Wyt ti’n mynd ar wyliau yr haf 'ma?
B: Ydw. Dw i wir yn mynd yr wythnos nesaf.
(I’m trying to say: Yes, I’m actually going next week)
Thanks, and sorry if the last question doesn’t make sense!
I’m not 100% sure, but to my ear it would sound better to just drop the second hi and just say Anghofiodd hi – She forgot. I guess it should be clear from the context what she forgot, and if it isn’t, you’d spell out the object anyway.
Often, but not always. One notable exception is the preposition â/gyda, which becomes ag/gydag before a vowel. (So it should be gydag e and not “gyda fe”, although you occasionally hear that as well.)
The word gynnau just means “earlier”, without specifying how much earlier. If you want to say “just now”, newydd + verb is in fact the droid you’re looking for
If you want to use actually as synonymous to really, the Welsh word is indeed wir.
The other idiom you could use for actually is a dweud y gwir, which can be put at the beginning of the sentence or at the end, but never in the middle like in English.
So for your example you could answer the question with Ydw. A dweud y gwir, dw i’n mynd wythnos nesaf.
Non-Welsh place names, to mutate or not?
I’ve got a book on Welsh grammar that says not to and explicitly uses Birmingham as a example, but I’ve heard Birmingham mutated to Firmingham in speech. What is more common?
It’s definitely more common not to mutate non-Welsh place names, especially if the underlying pronunciation is English. For example, I have heard people mutate “Paris” (“Dw i’n mynd i Baris”), but then it is pronounced as if it were a Welsh word.
On the other hand, I’d probably never mutate my place of birth, Berlin, however I’d pronounce it in a Welsh sentence.
You’ll hear some places mutated just out of habit - Paris is a good example, as Hendrik mentions - though the general “rule” is that you don’t have to, especially if it’s a less commonly talked about place.
Habits are hard to break in speech though - I’ve heard dw i’n mynd i Desco fairly frequently
Re: actually, sometimes I would use the Welsh equivalent of “it just so happens”, because that’s the meaning of what I’m tying to say (rather than “this is the reality”). So “I was wondering if you’d like to come to Aberystwyth with me?” “Wel, digwydd bod o’n i’n bwriadu mynd yna wythnos nesaf” - Well, actually I was intending to go there next week.
Early in the challenges, (can’t remember exactly where now) there’s a brief mention that “a” is “ac” before vowels… and very soon after, we hear “ac mae” with absolutely no explanation. I’ve seen in writing that what I hear as “nes” is actually “wnes”, so maybe there’s a silent vowel here too? Or is “ac mae” just a random bit of irregularity? Or (really pretty sure of what I heard) do I need a hearing test?
No, don’t worry, your hearing is fine! Ac mae comes from ac y mae - over time the y has dropped out of useage but the effect it had on a remains, so that’s why it seems like an anomaly now.
nes i (and wnes i) are both from the full form gwnes i. In formal Welsh and some dialects, gwnes is preceeded by a positive particle (fe in the S, mi in the N) which causes a soft mutation making the g drop off. Like with the disappeared y in “ac y mae”, the mutation has stuck even when the fe/mi has gone. And nes is just a further colloquial shortening on top.
It depends how formally you’ll be writing. The “ac y mae” is a very formal thing to write, and to be honest, you’d probably only find it in older writing these days. “Fe wnes i” is less formal than “ac y mae”, but still maybe more appropriate in some contexts than “wnes i”, but certainly in everyday writing “wnes i” is fine.
Once you start reading seriously, you’ll be able to pick out the different contexts where one thing is used over another - like comparing a contemporary novel to an official website or document for instance.
A handy tip if you ever end up writing and having to hit a word count, using the positive particles can really help bump your word count up!
Just to be specific … Gynnau is not ‘any period earlier’
Ive always used it to refer to a fairly recent event. Ive never heard it used as anything but ‘very recent’
Although ‘gynnau fach’ in the south is also heard ( heard: gynne fach in SW) could be an even better way of saying just now/right this moment to some southern speakers… but I dont live in SW Wales anymore and cant comment on that nuanced meaning
I’ve just got through the challenges at the end of level 1 that include saying “to eat” - which is great, as I was starting to worry about starving when I visit Cymru!
Sometimes I hear “i fwyta” but sometimes I think it sounds more like “i’w fwyta”. I don’t know what this little 'w might mean if I’m right. What is going on here?
And another little question. Why is “to help you” “dy helpu di”? That seems like it would mean “your help” which in English would be the opposite meaning - you helping me. The dy … di has not (yet) surrounded any other verbs in the course, so what is different about helpu?
(I really do want to do things the SSi way and thus hopefully develop a decent accent and natural speech patterns, but it is getting hard to resist picking up the textbooks.)
Strictly speaking, there’s ‘supposed’ to be an 'w in there (as per @siaronjames’ answer) when you’re saying, for example, “something to eat”. Welsh has it as “something, for eating it.”
Often the 'w gets dropped, but it’s the same thing.
The Welsh verb-noun doesn’t quite do the same things as the English infinitive. Dy helpu di is more like “helping (of) you” than “your help”. O’n i eisiau/moyn dy helpu di - I wanted helping of you, I wanted to help you.
People don’t always say the 'w, or write it, but it can be there and I think that in more formal writing it should be. I don’t know if you’ve missed hearing it, or if it wasn’t there, but Mae gen i rywbeth i’w ddweud is perfectly good Welsh. (Sorry: dk if you’re doing south or north - my examples will tend to skew north…)
