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16 October 2014
Ysbyty BrynaberCatchphrase

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Ysbyty Brynaber

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BBC - Catchphrase - Ysbyty Brynaber - Week 98
Week 98 - Main grammatical points

Brian offers to give Vicky a bath but Wendy thinks it would be easier if he cooked the supper: She says:

Roeddwn i'n meddwl byddai hi'n haws i ti wneud y swper heno...

Haws is the comparative of hawdd and means 'easier'. It doesn't have the usual ending:

-ach, which is how we recognise most of the regular comparatives, like du black, which becomes duach blacker, or tew fat which becomes tewach fatter.

Sometimes, you may hear hawddach to mean easier, but it's less formal than haws.

When Jenny makes a long-distance call from Nairobi, it's Jac who answers the phone. Jenny wants to talk to her old friend Agnes, so Jac says that he'll call her to the phone. He says Gwnaf i weiddi arni rwan, 'I'll call her now'.

Gweiddi means to shout or to call. In English, we simply 'call someone' but in Welsh you have to say gweiddi ar, which is literally 'to call on someone'. Another verb like this is cwrdd meaning 'to meet', but in Welsh we have to say cwrdd â 'to meet with.'. For example:

Fyddwn i ddim yn synnu os yw Jenny wedi cwrdd â rhywun mas yna.
It wouldn't surprise me if Jenny hasn't met someone out there.

There are lots of verbs like this in Welsh which translate slightly differently from English. Don't worry too much about them but try and learn them as you go along - try and remember 'gweiddi ar' and 'cwrdd â'.

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