"May I have an omelette and a drink?"
Translation:Ga i omled a diod?
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2904
Hmm, I thought '(a) drink' was 'ddiod'?
Ah! Is it a case of non-soft mutation? In which case why, in the picture questions, did it give 'ddiod' as the answer for 'a drink'?
OK, officially confused now. I can understand it mutating from normal to soft in a sentence, but why would it be soft standalone?
- 123
This is an issue I have with the course, but I do understand why they have done this. The contributors have chosen to teach certain words in pre-mutated forms to avoid having to go through explaining mutations in great detail since they are rather confusing. So "Diod" is indeed the base word, but since it is feminine you are more likely to see ddiod since "The drink" is "Y ddiod" and also in the pharse "May I have a drink" it would be "Ga i ddiod". Some other words they have done this for is "Gymylog" which is normally "Cymylog" and "Dafarn" which is "Tafarn" when not mutated.
- 2904
Thanks for that great explanation. I'd completely forgotten about gender! I'm not sure gender has really been covered much, at least not yet, at the point I've reached so far.
- 123
From what I've seen of the course I wish they had covered Gramatical genders more thoroughly, but I think they are just one of the aspects of the language that aren't really taught well anywhere to the point that I barely know any and can really only guess them using what few rules there are.
- 2904
Perhaps that is an argument for dropping gramatical gender from the language? Welsh already seems incredibly complex even before introducing gender! :-) Is there any situation where it is actually useful?
- 123
Oh just remembered actually it is one way from differentiating between the word "De". When feminine it means right, and when masculine it means South. So "Ewch i'r dde"=go to the right, and "Ewch i'r de"=go to the south. Of course this could also be understood from context. And if we were to get rid of grammatical genders we would probably have to invent some sort of word for "It" since the usual "Fo/Fe" and "Hi" represent what grammatical gender the word is.
- 123
I wouldn't say that it is exactly useful and even though it is a difficult part of the language for learners or people who maybe learned it as a secondary native language I feel as though it adds flavour to the language and I certainly wouldn't want to see it go. Also it can be overcome if there is emphasis with leaning the grammatical gender along the with word.
- 2904
Run out of levels - no reply button!
WRT learning gender along with word... Absolutely, such as with French and other languages with gramatical gender. Although, it doesn't seem to be well taught for any languages on Duolingo.
So in "ga i ddiod," it would be mutated, but since it directly follows "a" rather than "ga i," it isn't mutated?