- Forum >
- Topic: Welsh >
- "Ysgrifennodd Saunders Lewis …
"Ysgrifennodd Saunders Lewis 'Tynged Yr Iaith'."
Translation:Saunders Lewis wrote 'The Fate of the Language'.
19 Comments
968
Tynged y Iaith was a famous radio broadcast by Saunders Lewis that woke people up to the danger that Welsh could become extinct. It led to the formation of Cymdeithas yr Iaith, and looms large in the consciousness of Welsh language activists. Something Duolingo's Welsh language team were unlikely to leave out of this section.
'Fate of the language ' was refused. It's a literal translation: why is it wrong?
The word-for-word translation would be "fate the language" -- there's no word meaning "of" in there.
But English doesn't do this kind of possessive relationship by simply juxtaposing words in this order (thing possessed and then owner) -- if anything, we put the owner first as in "language fate" which is fate that belongs to language rather than being the language of fate.
So to translate that noun-noun construction to English, you can in your mind add a "the" before the first word and an "of" after it, to get "the fate of the language".
1570
I'm getting dinged on capitalizing Laith. It's not telling me I'm wrong, but just that I spelled it incorrectly.
There is no word for "of", either :)
The definiteness as well as the possessive relationship comes from the construction with two nouns next to each other. Adding yr or the like before tynged would even be wrong in Welsh.
Pobol y Cwm (literally, "people - the - valley") means "the people of the valley"; cŵn Sioned ("dogs - Sioned") means "the dogs of Sioned = Sioned's dogs); and cwb ci ("kennel - dog") means "the kennel of a dog = a dog kennel, a doghouse).