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Okay, that makes much more sense. linguoboy and I were having this discussion over at Omniglot:YngNghymru wrote:It should be cathod Cymru.
linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:Edit: I've already mentioned that the pre-French Influx cats didn't speak "proper" Welsh. Their dialect, or whatever you call it, is known as "the cats' Welsh" or "cymraeg y gathod". (Google Translate doesn't agree -- it thinks it should be "y 'cathod Cymru" -- but at least to me that reads as "the cats' Wales". I don't know Welsh, so I'm sure I've mangled it here.)
Y cathod Cymru would be "the cats of Wales". Cymraeg y cathod is "the Welsh of the cats" or "the cats' Welsh". (In Welsh, possession is shown by putting the possessor after the thing possessed.)
That's roughly what I thought would be the case, but I was having a hard time reconciling that with the "circumflex = stress" rule. Thanks.YngNghymru wrote:Fflŵorin is /flu.ˈɔr.ɪn/. The stress is still on the second-to-last syllable (as is usual), the circumflex here indicates that the <w> is a long vowel and that there's a hiatus between this and the next vowel.
True. Say, why isn't it /ka.ˈsa.ɨ/? (And what does it mean, anyway? )YngNghymru wrote:The acute accent can be used to mark irregular stress/hiatus: casáu is /kas.ˈa.ɨ/ - still penultimate syllable stressed.
I guess you're right. I can't actually think of many instances when you'd need to express the idea that there was a cat with you that wasn't yours, or vice versa -- I was only thinking of a certain scene in a story I read in which someone was accompanied by a talking cat that belonged to no one. That kind of thing doesn't exactly come up much.YngNghymru wrote:Is that really a distinction worth making? Context will disambiguate, I suppose - or you could say mae 'da fi gath yma or something.
Llawygath wrote:Shouldn't it be mae 'da fi y gath yma? I didn't think cath yma was a valid construction. Is it?
Okay, I guess I was being stupid. I was trying to come up with a sensible interpretation of Yng's sentence, and I wasn't arriving at one. I guess something to the effect of "there's a cat here that's with me". This appears to be a rare example of a sentence that's more concise in Welsh than in English.linguoboy wrote:Second, what's wrong with cath yma? That just means "a cat here" (as opposed to y gath yma which means "this cat"), e.g. Mae cath yma. Ydy'r gath 'ma'n eiddo i ti? "There's a cat here. Is this cat yours?"
I still haven't gotten anywhere with this one. <will you be collecting things or [no matches]> it is, and I can't piece that together into anything sensible. In particular, what's that last word? Y geiriadur mawr didn't find anything for beidio or peidio, so I'm pretty mystified.linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:Efallai. Dydw i ddim yn gwybod.Mae'r person o dana' i'n hoffi casglu pethau.
Fyddi di'n casglu pethau neu beidio?
There was actually more to this than the above quote, but it's not included here.linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:Mae cath 'da'r person o dana i.
Ydy. "Bū-chan" yw ei henw.
Sure.YngNghymru wrote:cael is 'to be allowed to'. People do use it in a more general sense of 'can', but prescriptively for that you want gallu.
Llawygath wrote:See, I don't know how to conjugate either of them, so I didn't even know which one I was using. I meant to use gallu. In that case, was I supposed to say Galla i ddim yn meddwl o dim byd i ddweud or something? Should I go ask a dictionary how to conjugate some verbs?
Thanks for the link. I've heard of that website before, if only I could remember where...linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:See, I don't know how to conjugate either of them, so I didn't even know which one I was using. I meant to use gallu. In that case, was I supposed to say Galla i ddim yn meddwl o dim byd i ddweud or something? Should I go ask a dictionary how to conjugate some verbs?
You could do that. You can also find the conjugation of gallu (and cael) at this site: http://clwbmalucachu.co.uk/cmc/cheatsheets.htm.
Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?
Why isn't it o? (I know, dumb question.)linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?
Because gallu is not bod and doesn't make use of the same construction. So, no, it's Alla i ddim meddwl am (not o!) ddim byd i ddweud.
Oh great, another dialectal difference thingy. It sounds like a fine distinction to make, but should I go making it? And what's the idea with having one verb that's used to mean 'mental capacity/permission' (eh?) and another that's used only for permission (yes, and lots of other stuff, but that's another story)? I feel like I missed something somewhere in there.linguoboy wrote:(Fedra i ddim works equally well here and would be preferred (a) in the North and (b) among those who still make the historical distinction between physical capability [expressed with gallu] and mental capacity/permission [medru].)
In other words, the conditional verb here is fyddai, not fasai or whatever. Is this another N/S difference? It could be, since the table I got the bas- forms from looked to have been written by a Northerner. If yes, which should I use? In either case, how does the above conditional conjugation of bod go? (Feel free to point me to a website and say "please use this instead of taking my time!".)Fyddai'r gath ddim yn cysgu ar wely nad ydy'n gynnes!
That makes sense. That's kind of the conclusion I'd arrived at anyway, though not in such clear terms.YngNghymru wrote:-yn and -en are not only singulatives, they're also diminutives.
Sure.YngNghymru wrote:Some words have a singular with a singulative ending or diminutive ending and a plural with a distinct plural ending. These are just things that have to be learnt.
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?YngNghymru wrote:Byddai and buasai and bâi mean different things in literary Welsh, but are used for the same thing (conditional and habitual past) in most dialects. My dialect makes a distinction between byse + related forms for conditional and bydde + related forms for habitual past and doesn't use bâi at all (in fact I'm not sure it's found in any spoken form). Basai is often considered to be stereotypically Northern but this is strange because it is very common in the South, too.
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).
Llawygath wrote:Why isn't it o? (I know, dumb question.)linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?
Because gallu is not bod and doesn't make use of the same construction. So, no, it's Alla i ddim meddwl am (not o!) ddim byd i ddweud.
Llawygath wrote:Oh great, another dialectal difference thingy. It sounds like a fine distinction to make, but should I go making it?linguoboy wrote:(Fedra i ddim works equally well here and would be preferred (a) in the North and (b) among those who still make the historical distinction between physical capability [expressed with gallu] and mental capacity/permission [medru].)
Yes, of course. See, it really was a stupid question.linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:Why isn't it o? (I know, dumb question.)linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:I looked at the sheet pertaining to 'can', and I'm puzzled by the "Do not use 'yn'" statement. Don't use it where? Not in front of gallu/medru? Not before the verbnoun? Not anywhere? Why not? Was my sentence not supposed to have an yn in it?
Because gallu is not bod and doesn't make use of the same construction. So, no, it's Alla i ddim meddwl am (not o!) ddim byd i ddweud.
Because Welsh isn't English. Why is it à in French and not de?
Okay. Fine by me.linguoboy wrote:Llawygath wrote:Oh great, another dialectal difference thingy. It sounds like a fine distinction to make, but should I go making it?linguoboy wrote:(Fedra i ddim works equally well here and would be preferred (a) in the North and (b) among those who still make the historical distinction between physical capability [expressed with gallu] and mental capacity/permission [medru].)
You don't have to if you don't want to. No one will think of less of you, but I thought you might want to know why you sometimes see one and sometimes see the other.
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