"I will phone you later on."
Translation:Ffonia i ti nes ymlaen.
11 Comments
1489
So, this verb form means both present (I am phoning) and future (I will phone)?
In the more formal language, yes, the tense is a combined present and future, 'non-past' perhaps. In colloquial usage it is normally limited to the future meaning.
The system of conjugated verbs in Welsh is actually quite limited as far as tenses go, apart from with bod which has a wider range of separate tenses. That is probably why constructions with bod + yn/wedi + verb-noun are so often used.
This is confusing me. isn't it 'ffonia i' I will phone, 'ffoniais i' I did phone and 'dw i'n ffonio' I am phoning. Or can 'ffonia i' also be used for present tense (albeit rarely used in speech)?
Yes, and yes.
In informal use, as taught on this course and many others, the ffonia i form is used for 'I will phone', if it is used at all - bydda i'n ffonio or gwna i ffonio are much more common.
In more formal usage, ffoniaf or ffonia i is used both for 'I phone' and for 'I will phone'
Reminds me of Hebrew, where the old imperfective form (non-past, I think) got limited to future tense in the modern language and a new present tense got made based on the present participle.
Except that I think they don't use an auxiliary verb and do the equivalent of I'n ffonio rather than Dw i'n ffonio.
- 125
I gave 'ffonia i di....' as my answer and the result said I had a typo and said it should have been 'ffonia i ti' Really?
- 292
So the soft mutation for an object of a short-form verb doesn't apply to "ti" after a future verb?
I think a moderator has replied elsewhere that 'ti' resists mutation as an object. It may be more complicated than that, but that's what I've remembered of the reply.
