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commands

If you want to tell someone to do something, you need to use the command form, or imperative. The imperative is created by adding -wch (plural or singular, formal) or -a (singular, familiar) or to the stem of the verbnoun. Sometimes, if the stem ends in a consonant, the singular version just uses the stem of the verbnoun with no added ‘a’. And remember that some stems are irregular!

verbnoun stem imperatives
talu tal tala!
talwch!
gwylio gwyli gwylia!
gwyliwch!
eistedd eistedd eistedda! or eistedd!
eisteddwch!
edrych edrych edrycha! or edrych!
edrychwch!

Of course, this wouldn’t be a cheat sheet if there wasn’t more to it than that. Some command forms are irregular and just have to be learnt:

singular plural
mynd - to go dos! (N) ewch!
cer! (S) cerwch! (S)
cewch!
dod - to come tyd! (N) dewch!
tyrd! (N)
dere! (S)
gadael - to let, leave gad! gadewch!

Note: In the event that you are using two verbnouns in the same command, only the first takes the imperative, e.g. ‘come back and pay!’ would be ‘dere yn ôl a talu!’.

don’t!
If you want to give a negative command, i.e. don’t!, then you use paid or peidiwch, or more formally, ‘paid â/peidiwch â’ with optional nasal mutation after the â, along with your verbnoun. Thus ‘don’t pay’ can variously be: paid talu, paid â talu, paid â thalu, peidiwch talu, peidiwch â talu, or ‘peidiwch â thalu’.

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