Wna i

Quick question raised by the review of Course 3 I’m doing. In Lesson 3 Course 3, we learn that wna i = I will do. Do and make are both served by gwneud, I believe, so I’m presuming wna i also means I will make. My question has been raised by something I heard on the radio the other day when someone said “wna i wneud”, which I (again) presume means I will do. Isn’t there a redundancy here? If I want to say “I will make chips later”, for example, would I say “wna i wneud sglodion nes ymlaen”? Diolch i bawb ;>)

You’re right that it’s technically a redundancy, well spotted - but it’s also very common in everyday speech and nothing to worry about. Wna i wneud sglodion sounds fine. :slight_smile:

Thanks Kinetic. I’ve heard it often enough but it’s always hard to know what sounds “off” or dodgy in a second language, especially if you’re learning it from afar. :slight_smile: Forum’s running faster BTW!

I know you say wna i wneud sglodion sounds fine but just to play devil’s advocate, is it correcterer to say wna I sglodion or not? I seem to remember a thread saying you are better off saying wnes i rhywbeth than wnes i wneud rhywbeth.

This is slightly off topic (but that doesn’t usually stop me). In my birth town, Ebbw Vale, we often say “I do do this” or “I do go by there”, etc. I’ve often though that this is one of the many examples of Welsh constructions being carried over into English.

Well this is very interesting Huw - it makes sense certainly. Wna i fynd sounds fine to me, but wna i sglodion, for example, sounds wrong, even though it is correct grammatically. I “feel” I need that extra wneud in there for the sentence to flow. “I do do this” is something you hear many English speakers say when they are emphasising something “I DO do it!” so I suppose that works the same in Welsh.

Good point, Bontddu but in Ebbw vale, no emphasis is implied. The "do"s are given equal weight in speech. If anything, the second “do” has more stress than the first. :slight_smile:

“Dee do do da doe doe dee doe.” … Which means “They do do that though don’t they though.”

Heard all the time, continuously, on the streets of Liverpool … so I’m told.

I said

I know you say wna i wneud sglodion sounds fine but just to play devil’s advocate, is it correcterer to say wna I sglodion or not? I seem to remember a thread saying you are better off saying wnes i rhywbeth rather than wnes i wneud rhywbeth

Just interested if anyone knows. :wink:

Actually, I’m going to try an answer after I’ve thought for a bit. If you say “I will do something” you’d say “wna i rhywbeth” but if you were to say “I will make something” do you then say “wna i wneud rhywbeth”? I know, obviously, you could say “bydda i’n gwneud rhywbeth” but, well, you know, maybe I don’t want to. :wink:

You’re asking for a judgement on correctererness on here?! :wink:

Purists would tell you that ‘wna i wneud sglodion’ is a redundancy, and by their own logic would be forced to accept that ‘wna i sglodion’ is more correct. I can’t think that I’ve ever heard anyone actually say ‘wna i sglodion’, though - maybe you’d hear something like ‘mi wna i’r sglodion’ - but most of the time on this one you’ll definitely hear ‘wna i wneud sglodion’.

Nice one, diolch Aran. I can now speak in a correctererful manner.

I’m feeling a little confused about the distinction between wna and bydd at the moment. I’m up to lesson 6 of course 3 - so it’s still fairly new and will need a bit of time - but there were a couple of instances during the lesson where bydd popped up in between wna patterns. So, is there a general distinction between them similar to when we learned wnes i and o’n i? At the moment, I’m not exactly sure if there are occasions when using one is preferable over the other. Diolch yn fawr.

Knowing when to use wna and bydd will come with time. If there’s a general distinction then hopefully someone else will be along soon, because I can’t remember. :slight_smile:

The difference is the same as when using ‘oni’ and ‘wnes i’

One is for a set point in time, and the other is over a period of time,

Wna I is when you will do something at a particular time, where bydd is over a loner period.

That’s my understanding of it, can anyone confirm?

Phil

Yup, Phil’s on the money here…:seren:

In practice, wna i/bydda i get swapped around a fair bit more freely than wnes i/o’n i - with wnes/o’n, it can be a hiccup if you go the wrong way round, but if you said, for example, wna i siarad efo chdi yfory vs bydda i’n siarad efo chdi yfory, nobody would bat an eyelid.

This seems similar to English - I was walking all morning sounds more natural than I did walk all morning, but I will talk with you tomorrow or I will be talking with you tomorrow both sound fine.

Aran: if you said, for example, wna i siarad efo chdi yfory vs bydda i’n siarad efo chdi yfory, nobody would bat an eyelid.

Which one is correct? Wna i because it’s a named period of time? This still really confuses me a lot, too.

@Jon: Thanks for asking about bydd/wna i in this thread. Saved me the trouble :smiley:

Which one is correct?

Neither - they can both be fine, although they’ve got a tiny difference of ‘feel’. It’s just not the sort of stuff that you can really get by learning rules - it only comes through usage/listening. Imagine trying to explain to an English learner when it would be ‘better’ to say ‘I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow’ versus ‘We can talk about it tomorrow’…!

Diolch pawb for the responses. They’ve been very helpful - Phil especially. That was the kind of thing I was wondering about. And Aran, I appreciate that this is the sort of distinction that will become clearer with time, so I’ll try not to worry about it too much. Diolch again.

@Joanie: Ti’n croeso. :slight_smile: