Talk:Welsh to English

English to Welsh

Macros

This will contain chunks of rules that we need to split out to make them more maintainable

Patterns

Determiner Adjective Noun

When the determiner is indefinite,
  output noun + adjective
When the determiner is definite,
  output determiner + noun + adjective.

Tests

(1) A red cat

   coch cath

(2) The red cat

   Y coch cath

Notes for areas to be covered

A sort of scratchpad / todo list, based on things that come up when putting phrases into the testing webform.

Conjunctive genitive

gwallt yr eneth - *hair the girl - the hair of the girl - the girl's hair

llaw y bachgen - *hand the boy - the hand of the boy - the boy's hand

Note that the noun phrase in English is definite - contrast "merch y meddyg" (the doctor's daughter) and "merch meddyg" (a doctor's daughter).

For an English phrase 
of the type "def + noun1 + of + def + noun2"
or of the type "def + noun2 + 's + noun1"
convert in Welsh to "noun1 + def + noun2".

Here can noun1 be a simple noun, or can it be a noun phrase? For example "the red cat of the young boy" - Francis Tyers

e.g.

For the pattern det.def + noun1 + of + det.def + noun2:

Output noun1 + det.def + noun2

For a Welsh phrase of the type "!det + noun1 + def + noun2"
convert in English to "def + noun1 + of + def + noun2"
or to "def + noun2 + 's + noun1".

The second noun is probably historically a genitive, but it has lost all case markers. The equivalent in Irish would be:

ceann an chapaill - *head the of-horse (gen) - the head of the horse - the horse's head

ceann capaill - *head of-horse (gen) - the head of a horse - a horse's head

"is"

the boy is in the garden -> *y bachgen bae yn yr ardd

transfer is getting the 3p sing form OK (mae), but proc is unmutating it (mae -> bae).

The verb needs to be moved to the front of the sentence as well, of course.

mae'r bachgen yn yr ardd -> *arethe boy in the garden

proc is missing a space somewhere, and the 3p sing info gets lost between pretransfer and transfer.

Word order again.

"was"

"roedd" ([he/she/it] was) is unknown, but I seem to remember adding entries for "to be" to the dixes in the mists of time. Was I dreaming?

the boy was in the garden -> *y bachgen bu yn yr ardd - bu'r bachgen yn yr ardd

Almost correct, except for word-order, and the fact that the preterite is being used instead of the imperfect ("roedd y bachgen yn yr ardd"). The preterite needs to be marked as only being used in written Welsh, and to have a lower likelihood than the imperfect. This is too rough a rule, but would do for the time being.