Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

That is indeed interesting @louis - and you do get the -edig participle even in speech…but I think the difference is apparent in these two examples: we say Edrychwch ar y ffenest doredig 'na = Look at that broken window, but Mae’r ffenest 'na wedi’i thorri = That window is broken. In linguistic jargon (sorry!) the first is an attributive adjective, and the second is a predicative adjective. I would be VERY surprised to hear a native speaker say Mae’r ffenest 'na’n doredig. I could be wrong, of course, and now is definitely the right moment for 57 native speakers to indignantly jump in here and tell me I’m wrong. So bring it on! :slight_smile:

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I tried to round them up, but they all said ‘Nah, he’s right’…:wink:

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Diolch byth! :wink:

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ond mae’r ffenest 'na’n bendigedig yndywe

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swrth ? lazy idle indolent I don’t know if this word is used anymore but links to the other words you mentioned in cornish and breton - possibly???

Rhwystredig iawn :wink:

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Good news! A riveting account of ancient Welsh grammar here: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=6dY_AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=old+welsh+edig+ending&source=bl&ots=1bfltFKqAP&sig=Jx8HJx7cXNMFi1n7i8RfrHeYYxo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir5e6ZrtbPAhXJrVQKHQeHDNAQ6AEILTAD#v=onepage&q=edig&f=false

Paragraph 1224 has the following to say:
But participles proper are inflected ; those of the present
tense active ending in ad or awd, the perfect in edig and awr, and the
future in adwy • those of the present passive, in edig, adwy, and awg ;
the perfect, edig and otor. These, like adjectives, accompany nouns
substantive, sometimes preceding, and sometimes following them.

-edig appears to be from proto-celtic -atikos, but I can’t find the reference to that right now

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Gareth King’s post is exceedingly interesting, knowledgeable and illuminating as always - ond dw i’n rhy flinedig i ddeall e.

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No, not at all. The threads here wander marvellously. Good to have it confirmed that “ffenest doredig” is fine.

What? On the forum? :sunny:

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Thank you Gareth, that makes it perfectly clear. And I just discovered that it is also well described on p. 87 of “Modern Welsh”!

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Thank you, good stuff - not sure I fully understand the precise difference in meaning between the rhangymeriad gorffenol goddefol past participle passive and gweithredol active lists
For instance toredig - broken, I understand that is passive, but gwasgedig - pressed - how is that not passive? Gweledig - visible is active, etc, that makes sense.

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neu wedi rhwystro

bit like skive in English then - unknown etymology - posiibly scandinavian for slicing - first used 1825. Used ubiquitously in South Wales and I bet someone somewhere in the south wales valleys will say something like scaefo in Welsh or wenglish???

tuirseach - what’s the etymology for that - bit like torri (also previously spelt tyrru, with historic tyrr forms) and english tear??. caredig - cared. siomedig - shamed. torriedig - broken (teared or tired?). Llifo - to flow, if you follow this thread could lead to flowed (lived?) via an unreported form of llifiedig). I looked up etymologies for words like life etc, and it actually comes from old german, but throw enough bonkers ideas around in a brainstorming sort of way and one might actually turn out to be correct - the key thing is to have an open mind about these things, when a lot of people seem to be programmed to look for the obvious…

Should there be an etymology thread for chasing wild ideas around, before we get kicked off this one?

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Oh Gareth annwyl, Gareth caredig…and naughty Gareth!! What are the other 56 native speakers doing on here??? :imp: :wink: :blush:

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Please explain!

yndywe, yntyfe - onid ife, on’d ife, however you prefer to spell it or say it - in my mind all differently pronounced and spelt ways of saying isn’t it and related things like that. I stand to await correction though, so don’t take my word for that in any way at all.

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Are they saying, then, that gweledig is an active past participle?? If so, they are wrong - like all verb forms with the -edig suffix, it is passive in sense. Gweledig means seen, i.e. ‘having been seen’, in exactly the same way as, for example, cyfyngedig means limited, i.e ‘having been limited’. So…in the sense that something that is ‘seen’ can be thought of as ‘visible’, then I suppose it is (just about) OK to give visible as a translation of gweledig, but actually a closer equivalent is either gweladwy (which really does mean ‘seeable’, i.e. visible)or a paraphrase using the impersonal a welir or a welwyd = which is/was seen.

Gosh, this is fun! :slight_smile:

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What Toffidil said.
This pops up a lot on the forum, here is one link to Iestyn explaining it comes from “onid ydyw efe” if you are interested in is derivation.
http://old.saysomethingin.com/welsh/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=5765&p=62100&hilit=Onid#p62100

“yndi”

It sure is fun! There is this band “Anweledig”, I’ve never seen them, mind, but I believe they’re quite good. (sorry about that :wink:)

Seriously though, apart from shifts in meaning for some of the words, is it possible that, instead of these only being passive past participles, some of them are actually passive present participles, corresponding to English -ing endings?
" -edig" apparently was also a present participle suffix in ancient Welsh, as well as a past participle suffix. That would explain at least some of the GPC descriptions.

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