Exactly so!
Yes - I remember my pal Twm Morys routinely saying pishin chweugain for fifty-pence piece.
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I am on Level 2 challenge 18. I haven’t done automagic for about a year. Is there a way of skipping forward on automagic to the equivalent stage please
@denise-6 not directly, but if you use the Skip button it will jump you along a bit, so you can just check where you are and jump along some more until you reach a reasonable place.
Sorry quick follow on question- is there a rough guide to how the hours in automagic correspond to the challenges
Not really as you can adjust the speed in the AutoMagic prototype, so depending on the speed setting you can take more or less time.
With the new app, once we get Level 3 completely loaded into it, it will cover the same material as the Challenges.
Hi,
I’ve been thinking how to translate the conditional ‘have been’ in the past . My guesses look a little over-literal and wrong, and I wanted to check if they’re anywhere near right, or if there’s a more correct and/or idiomatic way…
“I should have been quicker”: Dylwn i wedi bod yn gyflymach.
“It would have been better if I’d been quicker”: Byddai wedi bod yn well i mi fod yn gyflymach.
They look very literal-English and wrong to me…
Diolch!
My first instinct is that the first is fine, and you need an os or maybe taswn (sorry, don’t know the northern for that) in the second example. IIRC well i fi might literally mean better for me, but is used more as “I’d better,” not unlike “I should”, so the second example seems to me to be saying something that doesn’t translate neatly into English, but means more like “I should have been quicker.”
I’d guess at something like Byddai wedi bod yn well taswn i wedi bod yn gyflymach.
The standard version of tasen I think is pe bawn, if that helps?
Edited to change tasen to taswn since you were actually using correct written forms not spoken varieties. I’m still never sure whether to write “properly” or as I’ve learned to speak. It makes for a weird mix of spellings in my WhatsApp messages!
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Having checked Y Cyfeiradur (a very useful reference book), the first example:
“I should have been quicker” is Dylwn i fod wedi bod yn gyflymach.
I’d have to think about the second example.
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Ooh, interesting. I can’t think why there needs to be two instances of bod in that sentence. Can you unpack it further?
My suggestion for the second example would be:
“It would have been better if I’d been quicker” Mi fasai fo wedi bod yn well taswn i wedi bod yn gyflymach.
You could use “byddai” instead of “basai” but I was taught the “taswn i… faswn i” pattern in Welsh classes long before I did SSiW.
But I’m happy to be corrected by people who are better at grammar and complex tenses than I am.
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Sorry. I’m not good on grammar or as to the why of things. I was just looking at the example in the book which insisted on both instances of bod.
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No worries, that’s what this thread is for. I expect one of our resident experts will chime in if needed.
Thanks both! I should have spotted the need for 'byddwn i … ‘swn i’!
(My original attempt was to try to translate ‘It would been better for me to have been quicker’ as a synonym for 'should have, but I changed the English to include ‘if’ at the last moment and didn’t adjust the Welsh which makes a big difference…)
I wonder about the second bod in the first sentence. It looks like the concept is “I should be in the state of having been quicker”.
Thanks again!
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The ‘double bod’ is because there is no verb-noun for ‘should’, so it acts differently to all the verb-nouns we’re used to using.
Dylwn i fod wedi bod yn gyflymach is broken down as
dylwn i fod = I should have
wedi bod = been
yn gyflymach = quicker
but it’s worth mentioning that while that is the correct way to say it, you probably will hear people say dylwn i wedi bod yn…, because basically people are often lazy colloquially!
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That makes sense. Thanks, @siaronjames!
I shall rely on the ‘I was just being colloquial’ defence in future.
As I do with the various mutations with AFF / INT / NEG inflected verbs, which I spent hours trying to assimilate, when (almost) everybody (almost always) just shoves a soft mutation in regardless.
Now I come to think of it, doesn’t @garethrking have a whole section in Modern Welsh called the Soft Mutation Shove?
Thanks again!
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“I ought to be after being quicker.” (In the Irish-English idiom of “I was after doing” something for “I had done it.”) To be and being, both needed.
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I heard an Irish character on television say “What’s after happening here?”
Since that’s the same pattern as Welsh “Beth sydd wedi digwydd yma?” my guess was that Irish Gaelic being Celtic as well, it uses the same pattern, and has influenced the way English speakers in Ireland say some things. Which I find to be very cool.
I love languages!
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I wanted to know what “sai’n” is a contraction of and I found this on a different forum:
(Welsh: sai | WordReference Forums)
‘sai’n’ is a contraction of ‘does dim ohona i’, literally, ‘none of me is’
Because it is more of a spoken colloquialism mostly used in South Wales, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information available online. So, can anyone confirm the accuracy of the above explanation? Maybe @garethrking - If you have a free moment 
Yes, that’s it.
You might find some of the comments in this thread Short Form and Sai'n etc helpful too.
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