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UNIT 1
Uned un
Identification sentences
Question words Pwy?, Beth?
Identifiers hwn, hon; hwnna, honna;
y rhain, y rheina
Identification sentences ask for or give names or labels for people, places and things. English examples are ‘Who is that?’, ‘What is the capital of France?’, ‘I’m an engineer, Elwyn is a teacher.’ Notice that the idea of a name or label is an important characteristic – ‘Elwyn is outside’ is not an identification sentence because outside is not a label referring to Elwyn in the way that, say, teacher is. Put another way, the two main parts of an identification sentence both refer directly to the same person or thing.
All this is important in Welsh because a special sentence structure is used with identification sentences, and a special form of the verb ‘to be’ also. Look at these examples:
Pwy ydy hwnna? |
Who is that? |
Dafydd ydy hwnna. |
That is Dafydd. |
Pwy ydy’r rheina? |
Who are those (people)? |
| Athrawon ydy’r rheina. |
Those (people) are teachers. |
Beth ydy prifddinas Ffrainc? |
What is the capital of France? |
Paris ydy prifddinas Ffrainc. |
The capital of France is Paris. |
Beth ydy enwau’r plant? |
What are the children’s names? |
Mair a Sioned ydy enwau’r plant. |
The children’s names are Mair and Sioned. |
Notice that in the questions the word order is exactly the same as in English, but in the answers the order is the reverse – the new information asked for (i.e. the name or label) is put in where the question word was. We can sometimes do this in English, but not always, as you can see from the examples above.
The word ydy is used whether singular or plural, and so corresponds to both ‘is’ and ‘are’ here. In many parts of South Wales a different word yw is used instead: Pwy yw’r rheina?, Beth yw prifddinas Ffrainc?
The identifier words you need are:
If you want to identify yourself, you must use not ydy/yw, but dw i (or ydw i) after the name or label: Alun dw i ‘I’m Alun’; Athro dw i ‘I’m a teacher’.
Exercise 1
Translate into Welsh:
| 1 Who is that (m.)? |
5 Who are those? |
| 2 Who is this (f.)? |
6 What is this? |
| 3 What is that? |
7 Who is this (m.)? |
| 4 What are these? |
8 Who is that (f.)? |
Exercise 2
Fill in the blanks using words from the box:
Exercise 3
Match the Welsh and English sentences. One pair is already matched.
| 1 Beth ydy’r rhain? |
a Who are these? |
| 2 Pwy ydy hon? |
b Who is that? |
| 3 Beth ydy hwn? |
c What is this? |
| 4 Pwy ydy’r rhain? |
d What are these? |
| 5 Beth ydy hwnna? |
e Who is this? |
| 6 Pwy ydy honna? |
f What is that? |
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UNIT 2
Uned dau
Nouns and noun plurals
Nouns in Welsh are either masculine or feminine – you will see some of the implications of this in Units 6 and 8. By and large, you simply have to learn the gender of a noun along with its meaning, just as you have to with French, German, Spanish, Russian or any other gender-language. And, as with all gender-languages, getting the gender of a noun right is not of vital importance – it does not affect the meaning; rather it is something to aim for in one’s natural aspiration to speak as much like a native speaker as is possible. Don’t worry, then, about getting gender wrong – and above all don’t panic if you don’t know the gender. If you don’t know whether ffenest is masculine or feminine, then you don’t know and...
