Hey - not sure if this is the right spelling but when would you use this term. It’s confusing me.
Thanks
Medru, meaning ‘can’ / ‘be able to’? You’d use it whenever you’re talking about ability to do something. So stuff like, “I can speak Welsh”, or “I can’t remember”, or whatever.
(English also uses “can” for talking about permission to do something - e.g. “Can I go now?” - for which you’d use another construction: ga’ i fynd rŵan? But that’ll be covered later on. :))
Hi Benjamin. Are you asking about the literary usage of medru, or the spoken use?
Basically, in speech, gallu is used in the south, and medru in the north, to mean can, as Kinetic says above. We never use medru in the southern SSiW course, and you will rarely hear it in the south.
In formal written Welsh, though, there are distinct meanings to medru and gallu. Gallu is the possibility of doing something, and medru is having the skill to do something.
Dwi’n gallu hedfan awyren (I am physically capable of flying a plane. I have all the bits I need like eyes and hands to do it, and no medical conditions that would make it impossible), ond dwi ddim yn medru hadfan awyren. (I would basically crash if I tried. Probably during pre-flight checks).
Mae pawb yn gallu siarad Cymraeg, ond nid pawb sy’n medru.
Everybody can (is physically capable of) speak Welsh, but not everybody can (has the skill . knowledge to do it).
Important to remember, except in exceptional circumstances, this distinction is irrelevant when speaking. In the north use medru, in the south, use gallu!