"They are the champions!"
Translation:Nhw ydy'r pencampwyr!
25 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
When a sentence starts with the subject, as here, the verb is always in the third person singular.
The third person plural verb is only used when it precedes the pronoun nhw:
- Nhw ydy'r enillwyr. - They are the winners. (nhw being emphasised by putting it at the start of the sentence)
- Mae Siôn a Sian wedi ennill. - Siôn and Siân have won. (unemphatic)
- Maen nhw wedi ennill. - They have won. (unemphatic)
So to be clear, if I want to say “I am the doctor (not you)”, emphasising “I”, it should be “fi ydy meddyg” ?
i understand now that it wanted a certain word order for emphasis, but there's no way to know this when you just see the sentence in english, so i feel bad that "maen nhw'n y pemcampwyr" is marked wrong. it's a good translation.
maen nhw cannot be used with y pencampwyr - 'they' and 'the winners' are identical, so the identification/emphatic pattern has to be used.
If it was simply pencampwyr (winners) rather than y pencampwyr then you might perhaps use a non-emphatic pattern if their being 'winners' didn't really matter much:
- Maen nhw'n bencampwyr.
I does seem odd not to emphasise it, though.
Perhaps, in some circumstances, we might not want to emphasise it too much... e.g. "Mae Lloegr yn bencampwyr"
121
As Ibisc has said. 'Maen nhw'n bengampwyr" is grammatically correct but means "They are champions". But with the inclusion of the definite article (they are the champions) it has to be "Nhw ydy'r pencampwyr". "Maen nhw yn y pencampwyr" is not grammatically correct.
- 121
For equative sentences we use the emphatic construction so it needs to be "Nhw ydy'r pencampwyr" (They are the champions), or "Y pencampwyr ydyn nhw" (They are the champions).
Awesome. This fills in one of the blanks I'd been confused about regarding the emphatic structure.
I knew there must be something other than just the desire to emphasise that triggered the use of the emphatic construction, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
Many, many thanks.
Yes I agree with Samllyn. Ignoring the exclamation mark for the moment (which may or may not be a give-away), surely the sentence could be voiced in a casual unemphatic way, giving the "Mae..." construction?
From what the mods have said, it seems to be just how Welsh grammar is: if there's a subject-complement ('equivative'?) construction, where two nouns are balanced either side of the present tense of the verb 'bod', then it's the emphatic form Welsh uses.
Why no mutation of pencampwyr? It is a masculine plural with the definite article, or is it feminine?
- 121
Plurals don't have a gender in Welsh. "Y pencampwr"-"The (male) champion". "Y bencampwraig"-"The (Female) champion". "Y pencampwyr"-"The Champions"). I believe you may have confused Welsh with Cornish here. Welsh plural nouns never mutate after the definite article, whereas masculine plural nouns denoting persons do mutate in after the definite article in Cornish.
Not necessarily. However, the emphatic patterns are more commonly used in Welsh than in English.
