Week 75 - Main Grammatical Points

When Brian tries to placate Wendy on the phone and tells her that she's misunderstood him, he says:

Wendy, rwyt ti wedi camdeall

Camddeall means to misunderstand. Camddeall is a combination of the prefix "cam-" and the word "deall" to understand. "Cam-" corresponds to the English prefix "mis- " - as in mislay or mistrust. Like many compound words, the second element has to take the soft mutation, so that deall becomes ddeall.

The following examples should help you further.

The word trin means to treat, so to say mistreat in Welsh is cam-drin. Trin has taken the soft mutation to become "drin" after the prefix.

Treiglo (to mutate) becomes cam-dreiglo - to mis-mutate

Clywed (to hear) becomes cam-glywed - to mishear

And

Arwain (to lead) becomes cam-arwain - to mislead

Thankfully, no change to the word "arwain" following the prefix "cam-" as vowels don't mutate.

The ending "-ach" is normally added to the end of an adjective to form the comparative degree in Welsh, like '-er' at the end of adjectives in English.

For example:

Dewr - brave ...becomes dewrach
Glan - clean ...becomes glanach

But, there are some irregular adjectives. For instance, "mawr" doesn't become "mawrach" as you'd expect, but "mwy". And "bach" doesn't become "bachach" but instead "llai".

We hear Jac saying using one of the irregular forms. He says:

Tyrd â'r gadair yn nes ataf fi
Bring the chair nearer to me

The word for near is "agos", but the comparative form is "nes" - nearer. However, don't worry too much if you forget to use this form, as it's perfectly acceptable to say "agosach" in spoken Welsh - as long as you recognise "nes" - nearer - when you hear it.