Hi all, I thought I had mastered the use of “wedi”, but just as you thought it was safe to go back into the water, along comes Jaws Four!
As I’ve understood it so far, “wedi” is used to indicate an action etc which has been completed (“I have done xxx” etc) eg dwi wedi agor y ffenest.
But in Lesson 20 of Course One, “wedi” appears in something which is in the present and ongoing - “he is worried about you” and “I am worried about you”. Please excuse the phonetic spelling…“Mae fe WEDI bec-so am darner-tee” and “Dwi WEDI bec-so am darner-tee”.
Would anyone be able to explain this to me, please? - diolch!
Wedi appears in a few phrases in the present. I think it has a meaning like ‘he has become worried’ because it is also used in the present with tired - Dw i wedi blino and drunk Dw i wedi meddwi. So it is where we use the verb in the past eg tired to describe something in the present. Tired works better because in English we could say he has tired which would mean more or less the same as he is tired, where the other examples don’t translate as well in that sense.
I could however be completely wrong, this is just what I have guessed from looking at the patterns.
Excellent response from Emma there, real nail on head material!
Gavin - don’t try and figure it out, though - if you can, take Emma’s explanation, and just roll with it - because you’re not going to find any reliable way of pre-guessing which present tense kind of things are going to end up wedi-fied in Welsh…
I always thought of it as wedi = after: I am after tiring", “I am after drinking”, “I am after worrying about him”… some actions are done and dusted: the window is shut! Others are continuing…or at least their effects are… I’m still tired, still worried, still drunk!!! Does that help?
Yep wedi ~ “after” is how I subconsciously think of the meaning as well, rather than using any word for word transalation from the English, which rarely works in the end. An example from Level 2:
Mae ein plant wedi tyfu i fyny rŵan - “Our children are grown up now” (lit. Our children are after growing up now)
