You say and you said

Hello
Challenge 13 level 2. The welsh for ‘you said’ sounds the same as ‘you say’. Is that correct? Thanks

As far as I know, based on what I heard/saw in the Challenges, South version:
you say = ti’n dweud
you said = dwedest ti

p.s. did you notice the vocabulary lists of the challenges? I’m saying it, just because they’re easy to spot if you use a browser, a bit less visible on the iOS app, and not visible on the Android app so you might miss them but it’s often helpful to check them out after the challenges or to compare things.

1 Like

Thank you for your reply. In the challenge the translation of ‘I thought you said’ it sounds like ‘I thought you say’ and also when ‘you wanted’ occurs mid sentence it sounds like you want.

1 Like

Oh, in this case, you’re right about what you’re hearing. In fact (just copying a few examples here):
I thought you said that you wanted a cup of tea - O’n i’n meddwl i ti ddweud bo ti’n moyn dishgled o de.

I thought you said that you’d better not take too much of a risk - O’n i’n meddwl i ti ddweud bod well i ti beidio cymryd gormod o risg.

However I only know it’s because verbs works in a different way in Welsh and at some point you get used to them, just like with mutations.

I know there are a few explanations of the hows and the whys around the forum , but I can’t find them right now so if you’d like more details you’re going to have to wait for one of the experts to appear! :wink:

These sentences are running through different ways of saying ‘that’ - the type of ‘that’ which joins different parts of a sentence together.

The implied ‘that’ is left out for fun at random in the English examples, so you have to think about whether it needs to be there in the Welsh :crazy_face: !

There are a few options but where the second half of the sentence would have started with the present tense of bod (if it was a sentence on its own) then bod is used for ‘that’.

There’s a slight difference between Welsh and English for the second half of the sentence - if you said ‘I want cake’, in Welsh you keep that tense (it’s what was said!):

Ie I said ‘I want cake’

We tend to say this in English as:

I said, I wanted cake

Generally if it isn’t a present tense of bod in the second half, then y or ‘yr’ is used for that…but this is something which often is left out of conversational Welsh whereas ‘bod’ has to be there.

The ‘i’ is an alternative form to y/yr if what follows is the pretorite/ completed past tense.

(Phew!)

Rich :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Ps these exercises are perhaps the best examples I can think of to illustrate the benefit of the SSIW approach - letting SSIW take you through the options is the best way of getting a feel for ‘what sounds right’ - this will come in time…because the alternative of describing it - is devilishly difficult!

So, it is definitely a case where ‘don’t worry about it - it will all come out in the wash’ applied!

Rich :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I’ll quickly answer to your second post now, cause I’m going to have to read the first a few more times before I can do the same with that! :smile:

Yes, with the SSiW approach this :open_mouth:is what happens. You hear it, you get it wrong for some time, again and again and then all of a sudden…it just becomes natural to say the right thing! :open_mouth:

2 Likes

I might have missed someone explaining this already, but we have been taught that for longer sentences in Welsh, the 2nd part of the sentence reverts to the present tense. That is because at that time (in the past) the thing that was happening was actually in the present.

So, “I thought that you said” becomes the equivalent of “I thought that you are saying”.

2 Likes

I think it’s more that bo(d) doesn’t really have a tense – it works as if we said in English:
“He says himself to want a cup of tea” = “He says that he wants a cup of tea”
“He said himself to want a cup of tea” = “He said that he wanted a cup of tea”

In many ways the Welsh structure – just say bod and don’t worry about the tense – is easier than the English one we’re more used to; it’s just that we’re not used to it. And that’s where trusting the flow of the challenges helps!

4 Likes

Thank you very much.Not only does that explain things but also it makes it much easier ( as a learner) to build up sentences

1 Like

Now that you say it, I remember reading this before in the Forum and it actually helped me a lot getting the Challenges right. Until at some point…a few longer sentences with the past tense in the second part appeared. :dizzy_face: Why oh why! :sweat_smile:
(I can’t remember the examples/verbs right now, but I can look for them)

@rich Now I understand what you explained about the use of that, but don’t know how to figure it out in less than 5 minutes every time I think of a sentence. :crazy_face:

Yes, we use the past tense in Italian too - that’s why the Welsh way is not obvious for me! And right, reverting it to a direct speech can help.

However two things I had never realized until now that Richard’s saying:

1 . In Italian we have a kinda similar form (“Disse di volere una tazza di té” - infinitive, instead of past tense). Trying to think of this instead of the English translation might help (at least me - sorry English speakers!), too.

  1. Being so used to having the subject before the verb, I still tend to feel dw, mae etc as a subject instead of a form of bod. While even just remembering this can be the way to get it right.

But of course this is also part of the trusting the flow and it will all come out in the wash, so…! :wink:

p.s. by the way I do remember wyt in the questions, but don’t remember ever hearing rwyt that I had to look up now. How come? :thinking:

1 Like

The simple reason why you never heard rwyt is that it is mainly used in formal or literary Welsh. In speech the word is usually dropped:
For example: You’re looking happy - No one would say Rwyt ti’n disgwyl yn hapus, but simply Ti’n disgwyl yn hapus.

3 Likes

Yes! I think explanations are useful in terms of getting your head straight but not necessarily that useful when it comes to speaking. :smile:

Again this is where SSIW ‘s ‘pre-programmed brain’ comes into its own! :crazy_face:

I think I default to ‘bod’ in my head (as far as I can tell!) and switch at the last minute when speaking and I realise what comes next isn’t a present tense.

For some reason I get these strange memories of people in the pub telling me that they used to work with my brother …and variants of. :thinking:

This is a bit like ‘car crash conversation’ - anything could happen…but thinking about it that is a fair summary of my conversational Welsh. :grimacing:

Rich :slight_smile:

2 Likes

There are parts of South Wales where people do say rwyt and rwy’n etc. I was talking with someone from Brynamman and I picked up on the fact that she spoke like that and she was very naturally colloquial and certainly not a teacher or anything like that - I laughed once because she actually said “cic yn dy ben ôl” to her son - exactly how Iestyn used it on the old course, except starting with a rwy’n and something in between.

I should say that she was joking and didn’t actually kick her grandson in the bum.

3 Likes