Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-11-20, 22:20

Llawygath wrote:
Yng wrote:The forms are regular within their paradigm and have the endings -wn -et -ai -en -ech -en attached to the stem (e.g. baswn, byddwn, bawn).
I'm sorry, I don't quite see what you've just explained here. What are buasai, bâi, byse and bydde? Where exactly does the bit about habitual past come in?

When you want to talk about things you used to do (i.e. which were once habitual but no longer are). English uses a conditional form here as well, e.g. "When I was young I would wander over to the dairy house on boring afternoons...to "visit" the family who lived there. The father and sons would be outside working, and only the mother and her daughters-in-law would be home."

Llawygath wrote:More to the point of what I was wondering: does it work to have byddwn mean either '(I) would' or '(we) will' depending on context? I suppose it must, since the colloquial language isn't null-subject, but it still seems kind of funny to me.

"Funny" how? This kind of polysemy isn't unusual; cf. English I'd bet which can mean either "I would bet" (conditional) or "I had bet" (pluperfect).
Last edited by linguoboy on 2012-11-22, 0:43, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-11-21, 23:53

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:The forms are regular within their paradigm and have the endings -wn -et -ai -en -ech -en attached to the stem (e.g. baswn, byddwn, bawn).
I'm sorry, I don't quite see what you've just explained here. What are buasai, bâi, byse and bydde? Where exactly does the bit about habitual past come in?

When you want to talk about things you used to do (i.e. which were once habitual but no longer are). English uses a conditional form here as well, e.g. "When I was young I would wander over to the dairy house on boring afternoons...to "visit" the family who lived there. The father and sons would be outside working, and only the mother and her daughters-in-law would be home."
I see.
I still don't see what Yng explained, but I guess we'll have to wait for him to stop by.
linguoboy wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:More to the point of what I was wondering: does it work to have byddwn mean either '(I) would' or '(we) will' depending on context? I suppose it must, since the colloquial language isn't null-subject, but it still seems kind of funny to me.

"Funny" how? This kind of polysemy isn't unusual; cf. English I'd bet which can mean either "I would bet" (conditional) or "I had bet" (pluperfect).
That's perfectly true. I wasn't thinking in terms of English for some reason. :|

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-03, 22:30

Now that I think about it, byddwn i and byddwn ni must sound extremely similar. The only possible difference I can think of is that the first is /bəðuni:/ and the second is /bəðun:i:/, i.e. there's a consonant length thing. Context would probably do most of the disambiguating.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-04, 2:07

YngNghymru wrote:Wyt ti'n dod, on'dwyt?
:? Dw i ddim yn deall yr 'wyt'. Ddylai e ddim bod yn 'rwyt'?
Llawygath wrote:I remember now that yn llyfiad is a correct form
This has been seriously bugging me. My point was invalid -- verbnouns don't mutate after yn anyway.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-12-04, 5:19

Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:Wyt ti'n dod, on'dwyt?
:? Dw i ddim yn deall yr 'wyt'. Ddylai e ddim bod yn 'rwyt'?

Ddylai e ddim. That was a question; initial r marks an affirmative form. (This is a relic of the old affirmative marker yr, since superseded by fe/mi in the spoken language.)
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-04, 15:53

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:Wyt ti'n dod, on'dwyt?
:? Dw i ddim yn deall yr 'wyt'. Ddylai e ddim bod yn 'rwyt'?

Ddylai e ddim. That was a question; initial r marks an affirmative form. (This is a relic of the old affirmative marker yr, since superseded by fe/mi in the spoken language.)
Oh, nuts. It was a question? :? But you can't follow a question by a tag question, can you? I thought it had to take the form [[affirmative anchor] + [interrogative tag]]. I can't possibly fathom why anchors would be interrogative. The negative anchors aren't interrogative anyway:
- Dwyt ti ddim yn dod, nac wyt?
I think the interrogative form of that would be Wyt ti ddim yn dod?, minus the tag question of course.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-12-06, 7:46

It could just as well be rwyt ti'n dod, but the r- is often lost colloquially. It's not interrogative here, you're right.

Wyt ti ddim yn dod? sounds ungrammatical-ish to me (ti'm yn dod? is how I'd say it colloquially; wyt is often dropped). The 'interrogative negative' form is the same as the negative - dwyt ti ddim yn dod?

Incidentally, y(r) as far as I know has only ever been an affirmative marker in front of 'to be', where formally fe and mi are not permissible (fe is commonly used in formal language though: fe'i parselwyd o... is part of a line from a poem I studied in school). You can find this quite commonly in formal Welsh - yr ydym wedi symud, for example, was used for 'we've moved' on a shop near to where I live. The r- as a prefix is actually relatively rare in spoken language in my experience, generally being dropped altogether, although different dialects may retain it.

As for the thing I was talking about earlier - I don't see what you don't understand. Buas-ai, bâi and bydd-ai (all of which have the other personal endings too) mean 'had been/would have been', 'would be' and 'was habitually' in literary Welsh, but their various dialectal reflexes (examples of which I gave) do not necessarily retain these meanings. No dialect retains the pluperfect/conditional perfect, but some do retain the distinction between habitual past (byddwn i'n mynd bob dydd) and conditional (byswn i'n mynd tyswn i'n ffeindio'r pres). Generally speaking, dialects have a form derived from buasai for the conditional, but some have a form from byddai instead.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-06, 21:27

YngNghymru wrote:It could just as well be rwyt ti'n dod, but the r- is often lost colloquially. It's not interrogative here, you're right.
Good, thank you.
YngNghymru wrote:Wyt ti ddim yn dod? sounds ungrammatical-ish to me (ti'm yn dod? is how I'd say it colloquially; wyt is often dropped). The 'interrogative negative' form is the same as the negative - dwyt ti ddim yn dod?
Whoops. I do recall a sentence from linguoboy something like this:
A dwyt ti byth yn bwyta sŵp ychwaith?
I just assumed it was wrong, but I suppose it's actually right. There isn't any real reason why you wouldn't use negative verbs in interrogative sentences, so it makes much more sense that you would.
YngNghymru wrote:Incidentally, y(r) as far as I know has only ever been an affirmative marker in front of 'to be', where formally fe and mi are not permissible
Wait a minute. Fe/mi are permissible in front of 'to be'? Why? I don't believe I've seen them there. :?
YngNghymru wrote:(fe is commonly used in formal language though: fe'i parselwyd o... is part of a line from a poem I studied in school).
I'm trying to interpret fe'i and failing. Is it fe + ei? That doesn't mean anything to me.
YngNghymru wrote:You can find this quite commonly in formal Welsh - yr ydym wedi symud, for example, was used for 'we've moved' on a shop near to where I live.
'We've moved' is written in a formal register? This seems to speak to a rather different (from English) use of registers in Welsh.
YngNghymru wrote:The r- as a prefix is actually relatively rare in spoken language in my experience, generally being dropped altogether, although different dialects may retain it.
Wow, interesting. Good to know.
YngNghymru wrote:As for the thing I was talking about earlier - I don't see what you don't understand. [snip]
I understand whatever it was now. :)
YngNghymru wrote:Generally speaking, dialects have a form derived from buasai for the conditional, but some have a form from byddai instead.
My 'dialect' is somewhat confused on this. If I've understood the many explanations on here correctly, basai is derived from buasai. Basai is the first form I encountered and it seems less ambiguous than byddai, but the verb table that used basai looked like it was written by a Northerner so I suspect that basai may be a northern form. (Please set me straight if I've got it backwards or upside down.)

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-12-06, 21:40

Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:Incidentally, y(r) as far as I know has only ever been an affirmative marker in front of 'to be', where formally fe and mi are not permissible
Wait a minute. Fe/mi are permissible in front of 'to be'? Why? I don't believe I've seen them there. :?

That's the exact opposite of what Yng said. "in front of 'to be', where formally fe and mi are not permissible" = "formally fe and mi are not permissible in front of 'to be'".

Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:You can find this quite commonly in formal Welsh - yr ydym wedi symud, for example, was used for 'we've moved' on a shop near to where I live.
'We've moved' is written in a formal register? This seems to speak to a rather different (from English) use of registers in Welsh.

"We've moved" is just a gloss. There's no contraction in the Welsh form.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-12-07, 1:09

Basai is often, for some reason, taken to be a Northern form, with byddai the Southern equivalent. It's actually equally common in the South.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-07, 3:29

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:Incidentally, y(r) as far as I know has only ever been an affirmative marker in front of 'to be', where formally fe and mi are not permissible
Wait a minute. Fe/mi are permissible in front of 'to be'? Why? I don't believe I've seen them there. :?

That's the exact opposite of what Yng said. "in front of 'to be', where formally fe and mi are not permissible" = "formally fe and mi are not permissible in front of 'to be'".
I thought you might point that out. Yng seemed to be implying that fe/mi were permissible informally there. No? Wrong?
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:You can find this quite commonly in formal Welsh - yr ydym wedi symud, for example, was used for 'we've moved' on a shop near to where I live.
'We've moved' is written in a formal register? This seems to speak to a rather different (from English) use of registers in Welsh.

"We've moved" is just a gloss. There's no contraction in the Welsh form.
I'm afraid I have no idea what you're getting at. I know there's no contraction and it's just a gloss. What I meant was that something corresponding to <we've moved>, never mind that that's not an exact translation, was written in a formal register, and its English equivalent isn't particularly formal. What was so hard to understand?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby linguoboy » 2012-12-07, 4:15

Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:You can find this quite commonly in formal Welsh - yr ydym wedi symud, for example, was used for 'we've moved' on a shop near to where I live.
'We've moved' is written in a formal register? This seems to speak to a rather different (from English) use of registers in Welsh.

"We've moved" is just a gloss. There's no contraction in the Welsh form.
I'm afraid I have no idea what you're getting at. I know there's no contraction and it's just a gloss. What I meant was that something corresponding to <we've moved>, never mind that that's not an exact translation, was written in a formal register, and its English equivalent isn't particularly formal. What was so hard to understand?

It wasn't hard to understand. What's hard to understand is why you insist on drawing conclusions about Welsh examples based on the characterstics of their approximate English equivalents.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-07, 14:50

linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
Llawygath wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:You can find this quite commonly in formal Welsh - yr ydym wedi symud, for example, was used for 'we've moved' on a shop near to where I live.
'We've moved' is written in a formal register? This seems to speak to a rather different (from English) use of registers in Welsh.

"We've moved" is just a gloss. There's no contraction in the Welsh form.
I'm afraid I have no idea what you're getting at. I know there's no contraction and it's just a gloss. What I meant was that something corresponding to <we've moved>, never mind that that's not an exact translation, was written in a formal register, and its English equivalent isn't particularly formal. What was so hard to understand?

It wasn't hard to understand. What's hard to understand is why you insist on drawing conclusions about Welsh examples based on the characterstics of their approximate English equivalents.
What conclusion was I drawing? Yng stated clearly that his example was in a formal register. I suppose I was assuming that since 'we've moved' is less formal than yr ydym wedi symud and they mean the same thing then registers must be viewed differently by speakers of the respective languages. Where exactly was the problem?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-12-08, 7:29

It's literary Welsh, which doesn't really line up with English register categories at all. You're right that it is, I suppose, more formal than the English equivalent.

Mi + 'to be' at least is occasionally permissible in very low registers and in some dialects. Ty'd i fam'me! - Mi dw i!
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-14, 15:31

YngNghymru wrote:It's literary Welsh, which doesn't really line up with English register categories at all.
I'm getting that impression.
YngNghymru wrote:Mi + 'to be' at least is occasionally permissible in very low registers and in some dialects. Ty'd i fam'me! - Mi dw i!
I see. What register is that in your example? I can't understand it. :? Beth yw 'ty'd i fam'me'? I guess I'm supposed to just know, right?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-15, 19:47

Llawygath wrote:Dan y bwrdd, nagon'dydy?

linguoboy wrote:Beth wyt ti'n ei weld dan y gwely nawr?

Llawygath wrote:Dydy'r gath ddim yn ddewr

linguoboy wrote:llyfr arall eto i brynu!
This looks like a sentence fragment.
Llawygath wrote:y ci ac y cath
I've seen a'r mostly rather than ac y. :?
Llawygath wrote:about a few days ago

Llawygath wrote:Say, why isn't it /ka.ˈsa.ɨ/?
It seems to be /ka.ˈsaɨ/. Two syllables. Don't blame me, I got this from Catchphrase.
linguoboy wrote:Na ddylai e ddim.
Pretty sure ddylai e ddim doesn't work without nac, and dim isn't really supposed to be there either but is kind of allowable. The verb table form is na ddylai.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby YngNghymru » 2012-12-15, 20:59

It's very low register. Ty'd i fam'me means 'come here!' - it's the imperative of dod, tyrd, and fam'me, which is one of a number of regional variants (including fan'ma, fan hyn etc) for 'here'.

Pretty sure ddylai e ddim doesn't work without nac, and dim isn't really supposed to be there either but is kind of allowable. The verb table form is na ddylai.


You're wrong. Na ddylai is 'no, he shouldn't' in answer to ddylai e? Ddylai e ddim is 'he shouldn't'.

casáu is /kas.'a.i/.
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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-16, 3:02

YngNghymru wrote:It's very low register.
Ydy.
YngNghymru wrote:Ty'd i fam'me means 'come here!' - it's the imperative of dod, tyrd, and fam'me, which is one of a number of regional variants (including fan'ma, fan hyn etc) for 'here'.
Tyrd is the imperative of dod? And why is the 'r' left out?
YngNghymru wrote:
Pretty sure ddylai e ddim doesn't work without nac, and dim isn't really supposed to be there either but is kind of allowable. The verb table form is na ddylai.


You're wrong. Na ddylai is 'no, he shouldn't' in answer to ddylai e? Ddylai e ddim is 'he shouldn't'.
Yes, I suppose that's true. I was not getting it as usual.
YngNghymru wrote:casáu is /kas.'a.i/.
It doesn't sound like three syllables to me. I don't know why you say it is. :? What is the /s/ doing in the coda of the first syllable anyway?

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-17, 1:11

YngNghymru wrote:You're wrong. Na ddylai is 'no, he shouldn't' in answer to ddylai e? Ddylai e ddim is 'he shouldn't'.
Wait a minute. linguoboy was in fact answering a question with ddylai e ddim, though the form of the actual question was ddylai e ddim? rather than just ddylai e?. You could wiggle around this and say that it was the equivalent of a non-yes/no answer to a yes/no question, I suppose, which I guess it is really.

...now what's going on here? Why is it that I insist on correcting and nitpicking at those with two and four stars when I only have one? :roll: The idea is that if a learner corrects everything that she thinks might be a mistake she will learn what's right and what isn't, but I think I'm taking it a bit too far. Back to my homework.

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Re: Croeso i'r Gymraeg!

Postby Llawygath » 2012-12-17, 15:08

Llawygath wrote:y gath
I have no idea what possessed me to write *y cath. The correct form is even in my username.


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