Cool! I have also learned something new. Don’t you just love Wiki rabbit holes?
This is why the SSi forum is such a great “place”. It’s full of my kind of nerds!
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Manon Steffan Ros’s ‘Y Stelciwr’
Beryg mai eistedd ar garreg ei drws fyddai hi o hyd heb fy help i!
Could somebody unpack this sentence for me, please?
I think it means something like “It would have been risky to sit on her doorstep for long without my help!” but I don’t understand how mai and fyddai hi are working here.
Thanks!
Beryg followed by a subclause is an idiomatic way to express “Chances are, that..”, so you have to follow this with the appropriate way to introduce the subclause.
Let’s look at a quick re-arrangement:
Beryg y byddai hi’n eistedd ar garreg y drws o hyd heb fy help i. → Chances are that she’d still be sitting on her doorstep without my help.
But if you want to focus the subclause on something that isn’t the verb of the clause, you introduce it with mai (or taw for the Southerners):
Wyt ti’n meddwl mai dyna’r peth gorau i’w wneud? - Do you think that this is the best thing to do?
So focussing the subclause on “eistedd ar garreg ei drws” leads to the usage of mai here.
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That’s great - thanks, Hendrik!
I couldn’t find beryg in the Gweiadur, so I guessed it was an idiomatic shortening of perygl and so ‘risky’…
I knew mai had a role in introducing the subclause (though hazy on the details…), but I couldn’t work out how it fitted with fyddai hi.
Your rearranging and explanation makes it clear now.
Thanks again!
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This answer is a thing of beauty Sir.
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Bore da…
Y Stelciwr (Manon Steffan Ros):
Medrwn i fod yn bwy bynnag yr hoffwn i fod am ychydig.
I think that’s “I could be whoever I wanted to be for a while”, but I’m not sure how it gets there…
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Is the yn in yn bwy bynnag necessary/formal, or would fod pwy bynnag also work?
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What’s the yr doing in hoffwn i for? I think the hoffwn is 1PS conditional, but I don’t understand the yr at this point.
Many thanks for any enlightenment!
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The yn is there because the pwy bynnag etc is acting adverbially (compare to things like medrwn i fod yn gynnar, medrwn i fod yn gyflymach). Dropping the yn wouldn’t sound right technically, but in fast speech it can easily get swallowed up, and the mutation would usually remain, so you may well hear fod bwy bynnag…
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the yr here = “that” : “I could be whoever that I wanted to be”. Remember, in English it’s common to leave out the that, but in Welsh it needs it. And it’s an yr because hoffi isn’t a form of bod and the h acts like a vowel .
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Thanks very much, Siaron – that makes it much clearer!
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Hi,
Y cyfan oedd ei angen arni oedd ymateb, a byddai’n mentro fymryn yn bellach bob tro. (Steffan Ros, Manon. Y Stelciwr (Welsh Edition) (p. 32). www.ylolfa.com. Kindle Edition.)
I’m a little stuck with the first clause in this sentence. My best guess is It was all the answer she needed’, but I’m not sure if that’s right or how the grammar works.
Breaking it down, I get: (the whole) (was a need on her – she needed) (was an answer), but I’m not really clear on the construction of the sentence. Is it an identity sentence (Y cyfan oedd ymateb) with oedd ei angen arni interposed for emphasis?
Mae’n siŵr i fod rhwybeth yn hollol arall…
Dioch am y help!
“All she needed was an answer/response, and she would venture a little further each time”
It’s a focused sentence which puts emphasis on Y cyfan (which yes, means whole/entire/complete/total, but in this context and in translation probably best fits as “all”)
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Thanks, Siaron – that’s very helpful. I was overcomplicating again…
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Could someone explain?
Why is it sometimes y dyn ifanc, but other times mae’r dyn ifanc?
I’ve noticed this occasionally, from early on.
Thank you
y dyn ifanc says “the young man”.
mae’r dyn ifanc says “the young man is…”
y (the) will change to 'r after a vowel (and will also change to yr before a vowel)
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Thank you.
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Saw an interesting construction from S4C Newyddion this morning, in one of their posts on Bluesky (which is like Twitter but nicer):
Os fyswn i heb ddarllen stori Celine Dion am Stiff Person Syndrome, fyswn i ddim yn eistedd yma rwan.
If I hadn’t read Celine Dion’s story about Stiff Person Syndrome, I wouldn’t be sitting here now.
My guess is that the “Os - If” requires the conditional “Byswn - Would” rather than the “Doeddwn i wedi ddim - I hadn’t”, but is there a reason why the first instance of it is “fyswn i heb” rather than “fyswn i ddim” like the second?
Well, the heb construction works for negative sentences in the past, but it is optional. So the first part could just as well have been Os fyswn i ddim wedi darllen… – but with heb it is a bit shorter.
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Diolch, Hendrik. So basically it’s a stylistic choice rather than a grammatical one?
Yes, exactly, it’s a stylistic choice.
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And in case it wasn’t already clear, it’s unrelated to the os bit of the sentence - you can choose to say dw i heb instead of Dw i ddim wedi if you want to.
But the bit I’m wondering about is the os fyswn where I’d want just taswn or 'swn or possibly petaswn or something.
Is this me as a learner being prescriptive and judgy, or is os there a bit of an Anglicism? And, if so, is it more likely a learner’s mistake, or a native speaker not doing what grammarians tell them they “ought”?
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I was thinking that os resulted in byswn i rather than doeddwn i wedi ddim?
Good to know that heb can slot in for ddim wedi, though. Nice to have choices!