Welsh to English
Roadmap
apertium-cy-en 0.1
- 8,000 of the highest frequency words in each dictionary.
- Rules dealing with basic verb tenses (past, present, future)
- Basic word re-ordering for simple phrases.
- Aims and uses
- For a non-native speaker to be able to discern the topic of a general news item.
- To be able to identify who said what to who.
- To be able to distinguish is a particular item is interesting enough to be translated properly.
- Sentences of up to 5 words should be translated reasonably well in both directions.
Transfer
# Welsh : Literal @ Gloss (English)
Welsh to English
Word order (VSO to SVO)
# Genir pawb yn rhydd ac yn gydradd â 'i gilydd mewn urddas a hawliau. : Be born everyone free and equal with each other in dignity and rights. @ Everyone is born free and equal with each other in dignity and rights.
Noun Noun -> Noun of Noun
# Llywodraeth Cynulliad Cymru : Government Assembly Wales ==> Government (of) Assembly (of) Wales @ Welsh Assembly Government
Noun Adjective -> Adjective Noun
# bachgen hapus : boy happy @ happy boy # geneth bert : girl pretty @ pretty girl
Compound prepositions
<donnek> I've also thought of another wrinkle - compound prepositions <spectie> i will probably need to write a rule <donnek> eg ar ben (on top of) <donnek> lit on head <spectie> we can do a similar thing with those <spectie> for example: <donnek> becomes ar fy mhen (on my head, literally) = on top of me <donnek> ar ei ben, ar ei phen, ar ein pennau <spectie> are there many of them <donnek> maybe we don't need to think about them now, but just to flag them for later <spectie> if there are not many it might be worth making them multiwords <donnek> how do multiwords work <spectie> there are a few ways <spectie> depending on if one of the words inside the multiword inflects or not <donnek> that would be the case here <spectie> for example "take care" <spectie> "i take care of", "you take care of", "he takes care of" <spectie> but "take care" is treated as one verb <donnek> ok
Attributive and predicative adjectives
<spectie> its a problem with attributive/predicative <donnek> it's say something (which is) nice <spectie> but in english we don't distinguish between the two (at least in terms of morphology) <spectie> yes <spectie> in afrikaans they have a -e for attributive (e.g. feodale stelsel -- feudal system) <spectie> and "the system is feudal" - "die stelsel is feodaal" <spectie> donnek, aye <donnek> in Welsh the second would have yn before the adj <donnek> so we may not need anything to mark attrib/pred * Dywedodd rhywbeth neis wrthi = He said something nice to her * Mae'r peth yno yn neis = That thing is nice * Mae'n gar neis = It is a nice car <donnek> at first glance, we may just need a rule for rhyw+thing <donnek> rhyw = some <donnek> rhywbeth (something), rhywfaint (somewhat), etc <donnek> rhywle (somewhere)
Possession
Mae cath 'da Bwflw Bod+p1.sg.pres cath gyda Bwflw Be+p1.sg.pres cat with Beefalo `Beefalo has a cat'
- Apertium notes
We can probably deal with this in interchunk as follows
vbbod NP1 pr_gyda NP2
->
NP2 vbhave NP1
The 'yn' particle
As well as meaning 'in', 'yn' is used to form the present participle of a verb in welsh. For example:
- dysgu = to learn
- yn dysgu = learning
The present tense is formed by combining 'yn' with the corresponding form of 'bod' (to be) as follows:
- Mae Beefalo yn gweithio = Beefalo is working/Beefalo works
Note: when following a vowel, yn is abbreviated to 'n, e.g.
- Mae Beefalo'n gweithio