The Dysgwr’s Diary, Part Three: Conjugal Relations

Noswaith dda! Dw i'n gweithio mewn tafarn. (That means, Good evening, I work in a pub, in case you were wondering.) Man, I feel like I've had a real breakthrough in my Welsh. It took a long time, but I really think I'm starting to understand the structure of the language. Now that I know how you're supposed to form sentences, I finally feel like I can communicate-I no longer have to just point at things and say cwrw or wisgi or sgod a sglod (fish and chips).

Once I memorized how to conjugate bod--"to be"-I learned that Welsh is structured pretty differently from English, and that confused me for a while, until I just accepted that I had to stop thinking about it like it was English. A Welsh guy in the pub explained it to me. If you think about your average simple English sentence-a declarative sentence like "I like beer," for example-you'll see that the subject, "I," comes first; then the verb, "like;" then the object, "beer." Well, in Welsh sentences, the verb usually comes first, and many sentences are formed using the helping verb "to be," that is, bod:

Dw i'n hoffi cwrw.

Dw i literally means "I am," in reverse order of course so it's more like "am I." Then you have what's called a linking particle, "yn", which is a contraction here because of the vowel "i." Then you have the verb hoffi, which means "like"-it's often called a verb-noun in this form because it's the unconjugated form. At least that's how I understand it. Then, lastly, you have the object-my beloved cwrw. It's like saying in English, "I am liking beer," only with slightly different word order. The verb forms in South Wales, where my granddad was from, are these:

dw i - I am
wyt ti - you are
mae hi/e - she/he/it is
dyn ni - we are
dych chi - you are (polite or plural)
maen nhw - they are

Of course, it all gets complicated when you have to ask a question. Then, the verb forms change to question forms:

ydw i? - am I?
wyt ti? - are you?
ydy hi/e? - is she/he/it?
ydyn ni? - are we?
ydych chi? - are you (polite or plural)?
ydyn nhw? - are they?

So then, "do I like beer?" becomes Ydw i'n hoffi cwrw?. The verb still comes first. Now, the negative sentence pattern is a little different from both of these. Heaven forbid I ever utter this particular sentence, but if I wanted to say, "I don't like beer," then I'd have to use the negative form of the verb, then the subject, then the negative word ddim after the subject.

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