The Dysgwr’s Diary, Part Four: A Questionable Situation
Pwy ydych chi? - Dafydd ydw i. (Who are you? - I'm Dafydd.)
Ble dych chi'n byw? - Dw i'n byw yma yn Knights Ferry. (Where do you live? - I live here in Knights Ferry.)
Sut wyt ti heddiw? - Da iawn, diolch. (How are you today? - Very well, thanks.)
O ble wyt ti'n dod yn wreiddiol? - Dw i'n dod o America. (From where do you come originally? - I come from America.)
So I can make small talk in Welsh now (and believe me, with a pretty lady like Elen sitting there at the bar, I tried my hardest!). Of course, I had to go back and review how to conjugate bod and turn it into a question. And I discovered that yes-or-no questions are pretty complicated in Welsh-there are about as many ways to answer "yes" or "no" as there are forms of the verb "to be!" I'd hear what seemed like an easy question in English like "Is she here?" (answer: yes, or no! or maybe...). But in Welsh, I'd hear things like "ydw" and "nag ydw" and "do" and "na fydd"...I tell you, I thought I'd have to give up on this whole learning Welsh thing.
But then it occurred to me that when people say "yes" or "no" in Welsh, they have to answer as if they're saying a complete sentence in the appropriate tense with the right subject-"yes, I am" or "no, he wasn't." It's not random. I just think of it as having to conjugate yes and no. Of course, I haven't learned the past or future tense yet, so it hasn't even begun to get complicated. But I do know that if I want to answer a definite question in the present tense, this is what happens:
Wyt ti'n byw yma? (Do you live here?)
Ydw, dw i'n byw yma. (Yes [I do], I live here.)
Nag ydw, dw i ddim yn byw yma. Dw i'n byw yn Llundain. (No [I don't], I don't live here. I live in London.)
It's different for indefinite sentences, because Welsh doesn't have the article "a/an" like English. You just leave out the article entirely.
Oes ffôn yn y dafarn? (Is there a phone in the bar?)
Oes, mae ffôn yn y dafarn. (Yes, there is a phone in the bar.)
Nag oes, does dim ffôn yn y dafarn. (No, there is no phone in the bar.)
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