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- "I want a drink."
"I want a drink."
Translation:Dw i eisiau diod.
14 Comments
Diod is the correct word by itself. Ddiod is the softly mutated form. So since diod is a feminine noun "The drink" is "Y ddiod". Also "Ei(his)/dy ddiod" because ei(his) and dy cause soft mutations. Another time you will see ddiod is if it comes after one of twelve special prepositions which cause soft mutations e.g "Is he asking for a drink"="Ydy o'n gofyn am ddiod"
Diolch Ellis. It wasn't clear to me as the picture questions had 'ddiod'. But now I understand.
Yes they've been doing this throughout the course with the picture questions and I don't wholly agree with it as way of teaching people the words. Other ones I've seen are Dafarn which is normally Tafarn(feminine noun), Gymylog which should be Cymylog and i'm sure that there are others.
I see. Because it's a new language to me, it's confusing when they use the mutated words in the picture questions. I shall keep an eye out, and double-check in future.
Yeah I wish they just had a few units concentrating on teaching people mutations instead of giving people pre-mutated words
How do we know the gender of a word both in this course and if not in reality? Is there any way to tell?
Not in general.
There are some tendencies (e.g. nouns referring to male persons such as gŵr "husband" or tad "father" tend to be masculine, nouns ending in -fa and denoting a place such as swyddfa "office" are feminine, etc.), but beyond that, it's pretty arbitrary, and it's best to learn the gender along with the word if you can.
Finally, some words even have different gender in different parts of Wales! (For example, munud "minute" is mostly masculine, but is feminine for some speakers.)
If you have to guess, "masculine" is a slightly safer choice, statistically speaking.
I see, not a problem, German is similar in that it's nouns have little indication of gender unlike say spanish or polish, but if I can manage that i can manage this. Thanks!
Yes, it's true that the gender system of German is not an easy one. But we also have certain endings that always demand for a fixed gender (i.e. nouns derived from verbs or adjectives with endings like -ung, -keit, -ling etc) and the other endings often at least indicate toward a gender (i.e. nouns ending on -e are about 90% female). But you still have to learn the rest though (i.e. der Hase is masc.). If you have any questions about German, feel free to ask :) I've always been rather grateful for not not having to learn German as a foreign language... now I sometimes laugh a bit because Welsh is probably just as complicated |D
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On a different question in this lesson, ie the one where you have to mark all correct translations, the English is Are you thirsty? and yet the Welsh translations are basically, do you want a drink? Surely, this isn't right... unless of course there is no word in Welsh for 'thirsty'??? In French, for instance you would EITHER ask 'voulez-vous/veux-tu une boisson' meaning 'do you want a drink/beverage' or 'avez-vous, a-tu soif' meaning 'are you thirsty'. But they are definitely NOT interchangeable, so I don't understand why Dewi thinks that 'are you thirsty?' equates to 'do you want a drink'?
In Welsh, Dw i eisiau diod is used for both ‘I want a drink’ and ‘I am thirsty’.
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In the BBC Wales Catchphrase website "I am thirsty" is translated as Mae syched arna i.
A similar construction is used for "I am hungry", i.e. Mae eisiau bwyd arna i.
Do they sound more formal than Dw i eisiau diod / bwyd , or are they just an alternative way of expressing the same meaning?
