Old course level 2 lesson 20 gives “do you have my bread” as yw fy mara fi gyda ti whereas earlier it would have been oes ……gyda ti. Is this because of the pronoun? Wasn’t really explained at all, in fact just gone through the whole of old and new courses up to level 2 lesson 23 and use of yw isn’t anywhere. Can anyone please explain or point me to where I can find out?
Diolch
Berwyn
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It’s to do with Welsh using an existential form when English doesn’t.
If you think of the two sentences literally, you get:
yw fy mara gyda ti… is my bread with you
oes bara gyda ti… is there bread with you
The use of ‘there’ in the second gives it away as being existential, so that’s why the existential form oes is used in that one, but there is no ‘there’ in the first, so that’s why yw (or ydy in the North) is used in that case.
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