Questions about Welsh

[Jonlang]

I know that Welsh has no indefinite article and so the definite article is used in some different ways to English, but there are places where I'm not sure if it should be used and I've seen it used where I wouldn't expect. So are there any patterns/rules to look out for with the indefinite article? I know the forms are 'r, yr and y and that X y Y is used to form the the X of the Y construction but I'm sure I saw something like Dych chi'n mynd i'r gwaith? on Duolingo and I'm not sure why it needs to be there.

[Yng]

The only place I can think of where it is used consistently in a way it isn't in English is in expressions where English has to + place - to work, to university, to school. Here we always use y.

Y is also sometimes used in front of languages but this is less consistent. And maybe sometimes for generic nouns? But I think generally usage here can and regularly does follow English, so the only place you need to worry about is in that small list of set phrases with 'to'.

[Jonlang]

The only place I can think of where it is used consistently in a way it isn't in English is in expressions where English has to + place - to work, to university, to school. Here we always use y.

Y is also sometimes used in front of languages but this is less consistent. And maybe sometimes for generic nouns? But I think generally usage here can and regularly does follow English, so the only place you need to worry about is in that small list of set phrases with 'to'.

Yeah I noticed it in mynd i'r gwaith somewhere (probably Duolingo) and wondered why you'd need it there. If someone's going to work, as in their place of work, then chances are there's only one possibility. I'll get used to it eventually.... I hope.

[hwhatting]

Yeah I noticed it in mynd i'r gwaith somewhere (probably Duolingo) and wondered why you'd need it there. If someone's going to work, as in their place of work, then chances are there's only one possibility. I'll get used to it eventually.... I hope.

German has the definite article in such constructions as well. My impression is that English generally uses the definite article in less cases than most European languages.

[Jonlang]

Reading King's grammar regarding the collective/unit nouns, he writes "...for example, coed can be translated as trees (because English has only the plural to fall back on in any case), it has a strong sense of a homogenous group that trees on its own does not convey. The alternative translation wood (sing. in English) coveys the idea of a single item or group but cannot include any idea of the units that make up that group (the trees). Both English translations are perfectly accurate as far as they go, but the relationship between the group and its individual components is neatly expressed only in the c/u system..."

I'm not quite sure I fully understand the relationship between collective and unit nouns. But my question is: Can coed be used as a singular noun to mean "a group of trees" (as in too small to be a forest but too many to count). If you were stood atop a hill or mountain and below you could see 5 clusters of trees, spread fairly apart could you say "dw i'n medru gweld pum coed" for "I can see five groups of trees"?

[Yng]

No, I don't think so.

coed is really just the plural of coeden. Perhaps it's true that coed has a stronger 'collective' sense than the English 'trees', but it doesn't mean 'wood' - I mean, it can't be used in this way, as a count noun. coedwig is wood or forest.

[Jonlang]

No, I don't think so.

coed is really just the plural of coeden. Perhaps it's true that coed has a stronger 'collective' sense than the English 'trees', but it doesn't mean 'wood' - I mean, it can't be used in this way, as a count noun. coedwig is wood or forest.

Ah okay then. But it's true that in place names "coed" is translated as "wood"/"forest" i.e. Betws-y-Coed in Snowdonia apparently means "prayer house/chapel in the wood" which is well-known to people in the area, so maybe this is why King says that "coed" is more than simply a plural.

I just looked up wig (gwig) and it apparently means "spinney", which is, as far as I know, a rather archaic word for a forest. So coedwig literally means "tree forest", so does that mean there are potentially other types of "gwig", like bushes, shrubs, flowers etc?

[Yng]

Yeah, there's stuff like Betws-y-Coed and in those contexts maybe in-the-wood or among-the-trees or whatever is a good translation.

As far as I'm aware there's just coedwig.

[Jonlang]

Yeah, there's stuff like Betws-y-Coed and in those contexts maybe in-the-wood or among-the-trees or whatever is a good translation.

As far as I'm aware there's just coedwig.

Okay, thanks!

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To avoid another post, some people are arguing over this in a Facebook group and I just want to see if I'm getting it right, as I haven't thought about it much for a while, preferring now to just concentrate on the SSiW course:

Dw i'n hapus I am happy (neutral statement, nothing being emphasised)

Fi ydy hapus I am happy (emphasising that it is me who is the happy one)

Hapus dw i I am happy (emphasising that I am happy, not sad (or whatever))

Fi sy'n hapus It's me who is happy (but not really sure why this differs to Fi ydy hapus)

[Yng]

Fi ydy hapus seems wrong to me. Generally speaking if the subject is placed before the verb bod it has to take the invariable form sy - so fi sy'n hapus, for example. The only exception is if the verb is followed by a definite, because generally yn likes to be followed by indefinites. So:

fi ydy dy wraig chdi
fi ydy'r gorau

but

fi sy'n hapus

[Jonlang]

Fi ydy hapus seems wrong to me. Generally speaking if the subject is placed before the verb bod it has to take the invariable form sy - so fi sy'n hapus, for example. The only exception is if the verb is followed by a definite, because generally yn likes to be followed by indefinites. So:

fi ydy dy wraig chdi
fi ydy'r gorau

but

fi sy'n hapus

So Fi ydy ADJECTIVE is wrong, it should be Fi sy'n ADJ but something that's a solid fact can be Fi ydy dy ŵr di, or Ti ydy fy mhlant i but ti sy'n drist?

Also, I really don't like chdi... it seems like they can't decide between ti and chi.

[Znex]

Well chdi is only a Northern form of ti as far as I can tell, so it's not like you have to use it.

[Yng]

So Fi ydy ADJECTIVE is wrong, it should be Fi sy'n ADJ but something that's a solid fact can be Fi ydy dy ŵr di, or Ti ydy fy mhlant i but ti sy'n drist?

It's not so much a matter of 'solid facts' - it's more about whether there's a definite article or a possessive pronoun on a noun or adjective.

So ti ydy'r gorau - you're the best. Megan oedd ei enw hi. Megan was her name. Ei enw hi oedd Megan. Her name was Megan.

*wyt ti'n y gorau, *roedd ei enw hi yn Megan, *roedd Megan yn ei enw hi all sound wrong.

[Jonlang]

So Fi ydy ADJECTIVE is wrong, it should be Fi sy'n ADJ but something that's a solid fact can be Fi ydy dy ŵr di, or Ti ydy fy mhlant i but ti sy'n drist?

It's not so much a matter of 'solid facts' - it's more about whether there's a definite article or a possessive pronoun on a noun or adjective.

So ti ydy'r gorau - you're the best. Megan oedd ei enw hi. Megan was her name. Ei enw hi oedd Megan. Her name was Megan.

*wyt ti'n y gorau, *roedd ei enw hi yn Megan, *roedd Megan yn ei enw hi all sound wrong.

Diolch. So could ti ydy'r gorau be rearranged as y gorau ydy ti to emphasise "the best" or am I getting it wrong?

[Yng]

It's quite difficult for me to tell you a rule to be honest. But no - here we'd say y gorau wyt ti.

My feeling is that if bod is conjugated and followed by a pronoun, it must agree with that pronoun. This is generally the case in Welsh anyway - verbs only agree with a following pronoun (nest ti but ti naeth o).

[Jonlang]

It's quite difficult for me to tell you a rule to be honest. But no - here we'd say y gorau wyt ti.

My feeling is that if bod is conjugated and followed by a pronoun, it must agree with that pronoun. This is generally the case in Welsh anyway - verbs only agree with a following pronoun (nest ti but ti naeth o).

Okay thanks. I'm not going to worry about it too much, I'm going to plod on with the SSiW course which is surprisingly effective... so far at least.

[Jonlang]

A while back I asked about the construction of the phrase cig wedi ei goginio literally meat after its cooking for "cooked meat". Now I'm totally down with this, I even think it's a brilliantly logical way of saying it, but last night while on a Facebook page for Cymraeg learners someone said that "the dead dog" in Welsh is y ci wedi marw, which to me looks like it should mean "the dog has died", but I was told that it can be both "the dead dog" and "the dog has died". Now I'm dubious because I would have thought that "the dead dog" would be y ci wedi ei farw the dog after its dying, because as far as I know Mae'r ci yn marw is The dog is dying. If I'm wrong I'm totally confused because I don't see a difference in the structures of the two statements.

[Znex]

To my knowledge, the possessive is optional, so "the cooked meat" is y cig wedi (ei) coginio and "the dead dog" is y ci wedi (ei) marw. "The dog is dead" would be Mae'r ci wedi marw.

[Yng]

The construction you're talking about is for transitive verbs. Y ci wedi'i ladd for example would be 'the killed dog'. The verbnoun + possessive pronoun construction, as you know, generally expresses a verbnoun and its object - not its subject. For intransitive verbs, the equivalent construction has no pronoun, so it's just wedi marw.

[Znex]

Ah, that makes sense.

[Jonlang]

I still don't really get why y ci wedi marw is different to y cig wedi'i goginio... Why does cig need a pronoun and ci doesn't? But I've been ridiculously tired this weekend because of work so trying to take in this stuff probably isn't a good idea.

[Yng]

Because 'die' is intransitive and 'cook' is not.

[Jonlang]

Okay, I think I'm getting my head around it now.

Just wondering; are VNs which do not have a vowel suffix to the verb-stem always VNs without a noun version? Like cerdded and siarad are walk and speak but you can't have a walk or a speak, and dweud is say/tell but you can't have a say/tell? Others like hoffi are hoff- (verb-stem) + -i (VN suffix) as far as I can tell from what is in King's grammar.

[linguoboy]

Just wondering; are VNs which do not have a vowel suffix to the verb-stem always VNs without a noun version? Like cerdded and siarad are walk and speak but you can't have a walk or a speak, and dweud is say/tell but you can't have a say/tell? Others like hoffi are hoff- (verb-stem) + -i (VN suffix) as far as I can tell from what is in King's grammar.

I haven't a clue what you're asking here. Something about the relationship between verb-nouns and concrete deverbal nouns? The English "have a" construction doesn't work with most verbs and has bugger-all to do with the grammar of Welsh in any case.

[Yng]

Yeah, I'm also confused.

There's no semantic difference between verbnouns that are formed with the bare stem and verbnouns formed with suffixes. They're all verbnouns. There's a lot of different suffixes (-ed as in cerdded, -eg as in rhedeg, -u, -o, -io, -i etc) but they're all similar in terms of function.