Gareth
Thank you .Thats very helpful.I do have difficulty following the tense the news uses.
Can anyone help me translate “As long as I can remember” and “not yet comfortable” into Welsh? I’m conducting a survey, and the terms need to be as precise as possible. What I have so far:
“As long as I can remember”: ers dw i’n gallu cofio
“not yet comfortable”: nid yn gyfforddus eto
Diolch am eich cymorth!
The joys of Welsh! At least other languages give you a fighting chance: you can usually see what’s causing things if you know what to look for. But in Welsh, the little blighters are invisible half the time!
I am trying to write the sentence “He had his wisdom teeth removed.” I’ve gotten as far as “Wnaeth e gael ei gilddannedd ol e [yn?] gwaredu”, but I’m missing how to make “to remove” into “removed”. Or, maybe I should use “cymryd allan” instead of “gwaredu”. Or the whole thing is totally wrong!
Hope I’m not being totally stupid. Dw i wedi blino heddiw! Thanks for any assistance.
I can’t answer for the whole sentence, but I think I can answer this:
I don’t think Welsh has a past-participle form like the English “-ed” form (not modern Welsh, anyway).
So it’s fine to leave it as “gwaredu”. You could think of it as “he got his wisdom teeth their removing” or “his wisdom teeth got their removing”, if you like.
But someone else might like to comment on the construction as a whole, which I am not sure about.
The model for this type of sentence (and mikeellwood is essentially right about English past participles in modern Welsh) is the very common Dw i’n cael torri ngwallt I’m having my hair cut. On this pattern, He had his wisdom teeth removed would be Cafodd e waredu ei gilddannedd or Naeth e gael gwaredu ei gilddannedd. And I’m sure tynnu allan would be fine as well, so: Cafodd e dynnu allan ei gilddannedd or Naeth e gael tynnu allan ei gilddannedd. And of course those Cafodds could have a marker in front, so Fe gafodd etc etc, or Mi gafodd etc etc.
This is huge fun, isn’t it?
Well, so I wasn’t being stupid, just past my pay grade
@mikeellwood Diolch! A lesson in past participles in Welsh - excellent! (There’s all this English grammar stored way back in my brain somewhere. You know how kids in school complain, “Why are we learning this, we will never need to know this!” Well, learning another language is when the grammar gets used again. I’m slowly pulling it back out…
@garethrking Thanks so much for your explanation and many examples - really helpful. (Somehow “tynnu allan” sounds much more painful to me in this context than “cymryd allan” )
By the way, the thing I love about your dictionary (which is where I found “cael gwared”) is that you give lots of examples of how to use words and phrases. I’ve learned so much more than I would have if there were just words and their translations.
SO much fun! I had no idea when I started learning Welsh how much I would enjoy it, and I’m always so pleased when another bit clicks into place and my ability to express myself expands
This is one pattern that I don’t feel very familiar with, although I believe you that it’s common! Earlier today I was wrestling with the idea of how to say ‘We’re having a shed built.’ Would you say ‘Dyn ni’n cael adeiladu sied’? Sounds a bit funny.
And yet it is correct.
That was the idea right from the start, and I am so pleased that you have found it more useful and informative than a traditional style wordlist. It was intended to be!
I hope you exclude English here
The man (whom) you know; I told you (that) I was not well; the game (that) Wales won…
Thank you, how interesting! Will have to practise this one now.
Thinking about this in English - gatting a hair cut or getting a shed built would be more natural to me than having a hair cut or shed built - I wonder if we use get and got more in Wales?. Another one I wondered about was fetch, I get the impression we use this word very widely as welll - “fetch me that from the back will you”
Just a thought?
not sure what the Welsh for that type of English construction would, but it sounds along the lines of something Welsh?
I’m sure this has been answered before but…
is there a rule for when you use yours his etc.
eg…weles i dy gath… neu…weles i dy gath di
same kind of thing with regard him you etc
Dwi’n mynd i weld ti … Dwi’n mynd i dy weld di
I may just be having a mental block today!
Now there is a lovely example of English confusing to learners thereof!! “Which one are you getting cut?”, we used to ask as kids!!
While I’m here,
@aran As a sort of light relief I decided to do Level 1 Challenge 15, Gog version. I soon realised that I naturally say, for example “F’mrawd i” or “f’mrawd imi” and you and Catrin were not adding ‘i’ or ‘imi’. I know it’s academic as I’m not likely to be talking to a real person ever. but if I say ‘imi’ or ‘i’, will I sound like someone reading out of a book, or a Victorian or???
oooo, a similar question! That’s exactly what I was wondering!
I think you’d use ‘nôl’ - which is a bit of a funny one. I looked it up as I couldn’t think of an imperative for it, and apparently there isn’t one! (The Gweiadur says:
‘Sylwch: ni ddefnyddir y ffurfiau cryno ac ni ellir ei defnyddio ond gyda berfau eraill.’)
The example they give is:
A ei di i nôl fy sbectol imi?
Or what I remember from course 3 was something like:
Nei di i nôl disgled i fi? (They’re always talking about cups of tea!)
No rule at all for speaking, as far as I can make out! You’ll hear all the possible variations. If you are writing formally, I think you’d leave off the final ‘di’ / ‘ti’ participle thingy.
Diolch
O’n i’n meddwl yr un peth ond do’n i ddim yn siwr!!!
Felly dw i’n teimlo’n well am dani.
Diolch eto.
To me, ‘dan ni’n cael adeiladu sied’ would sound like ‘We’re getting to build a shed’ (as if someone like Tom Sawyer has given it to you as a ‘prize’ instead of painting a fence) - if I wanted to make the point that I was having it done by someone else, I’d say ‘Dan ni’n cael sied wedi’i adeiladu’ or even ‘Dan ni’n cael sied wedi’i adeiladu i ni’…
I’d go for:
- ers i mi gofio
- dim yn gyfforddus eto
Fy mrawd i is completely normal, and just a matter of personal taste/flow of the sentence kind of stuff - ‘fy mrawd imi’ is something you’ve mis-remembered - you might say ‘Mae o’n frawd imi’, ‘he is a brother to me’, but you wouldn’t use it as part of the ordinary possessive…