Very well / very well

I’m on level one and in challenge 18/19 it talks about I feel very good about … but it says yn dda i’awn? Is that not very well? Is very good not da i’awn? or does it depend on context?

Many thanks

‘Well’ in English is normally an adverb, ‘good’ the corresponding adjective. In Welsh, ‘da’ is normally an adjective, and becomes and adverb by prefixing ‘yn’ - ‘yn dda’
Maybe it is easier to say that ‘well’ and ‘good’ both map to ‘da’ in Welsh

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Short answer: yes, it’s a bit contextual, but you’re basically right.

Long answer: yn does two slightly different jobs. One is that you can use it to turn an adjective into an adverb: araf ‘slow’ (on road signs), but oedd hi’n cerdded yn araf ‘she was walking slowly’ - or, like it says in the course somewhere, ‘a bit more slowly’ = bach yn arafach (where arafach on its own is just ‘slower’). In this it’s doing a job like English ‘-ly’ – da iawn ‘very good’, yn dda iawn ‘very well’.

The other job is kind of untranslatable, but you’ll have heard lots of examples already: every time you use ‘I am’ or ‘she was’ or ‘to be’ there’s an yn there, which softens a following adjective or noun. Cyflym - mae’n gyflym = ‘fast - it’s fast’; da iawn - oedd hi’n dda iawn = ‘very good - she/it was very good’.

But to be honest, the distinction isn’t necessarily that clear-cut or important in English: I could say I feel well (if I don’t feel ill), but Nina Simone sang about feelin’ good - so try to just go with the flow of what you hear :slight_smile:

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