Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Are those your children in the pub? - Ai eich plant chi ydy rheina yn y dafarn?

What is the function of that “ai”? I seem to have missed it being introduced and I can’t really figure it out myself :disappointed:

Ai and its southern cousin ife are used at the beginning of a question when the word order is changed (like in this case, for emphasis), and the question itself doesn’t start with a verb.

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If I understand this correctly, would the “unstressed” version be “Ydy rheina eich plant (chi) yn y dafarn”? I.e. if you asked the prompt question with a neutral intonation?

Yes, more or less, but without being able to explain why – and I concede I may be wrong here – I’d say
Ydy’r rheina yn y dafarn eich plant chi?

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What is the difference between gwelsom and gwelson ni please?

There is no difference in meaning, but in style. The first one is typical for formal or literary written Welsh, where you leave out the personal pronoun and use slightly different endings (like -m instead of -n for first person plural). The second one is used in speech and informal writing.
(One example of literary Welsh where you can see such verb forms is of course the national anthem, like in the line Dros ryddid collasant eu gwaedFor freedom they spilled their blood)

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Can anyone help with

Wnes I ddim/ do’n I ddim. Is there something I’m missing, t help me get it right?

Diolch

@victoria-36 this is a question that has come up quite a lot in the past. If you search for “wnes i ddim” you’ll find quite a few threads discussing it, but this one has quite a lot of information:

Do’n i ddim / wnes i ddim - Welsh / General / Questions - SSi Forum

What is the difference between darn/darnau and rhan/rhannau? When do I use one rather than the other?

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Interesting question… after mulling this over for a bit I think that darn is used more for talking about physical parts (like darn o gacena piece of a pie), while rhan is more on a theoretical or conceptual level (like swydd rhan-amserpart-time job, or rhan o’r corffa part of the body)
That said, these are the things that you usually pick up over time, by seeing the words being used by different speakers in multiple contexts. (And especially rhan also appears in set expressions like rhan amlaf for the most part, mewn rhan in part and ar fy rhan on my behalf)

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Thanks. I forgot all about “darn” until hearing it this evening, and then this question became top of my brain’s concerns.

Agreed. I’m impatient though. And I don’t get nearly as much exposure to Welsh as I’d like.

Diolch yn fawr–I have never found myself in a position to use more formal or literary Welsh, so that’s why it was ‘foreign’ to me :slight_smile:

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My idea is that these meaningless refrains were meant to imitate the sound of the harp that typically accompanies singing inWelah music

Wait, what is conceptual about body parts? Aren’t bodies usually physical?
So if this detective mystery I’m reading right now were in Welsh, would the police be finding rhannau corff, or darnau corff? (Dark, I know. Sorry.)

If you talk about for example, your legs being a part of your body, but they are (hopefully) still attached, you’d be speaking of them as being rhan o dy gorff.
And although I can’t say that I have actually seen the other turn of phrase, but following that logic, body parts (of a dead body) would indeed be darnau corff.

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Thanks, Hendrik. :sweat_smile:

I’m nowhere near confident enough (nor competent enough) for anyone to take anything from this, but on further pondering I’ve started thinking of it as “darn” being a piece taken from something (where the whole has been broken up) and “rhan” being for the components that make up a whole. I have no idea if it holds up under scrutiny, but it’s helped me remember things so far.

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Can someone confirm for me that “addewid” is promise as a noun and “addo” is promise as a verb? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

Yes, that’s right :slight_smile:

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That sounds logical. I will try to pay attention to when I hear / read each word and see whether it keeps following that pattern! Thank you. :slightly_smiling_face:

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