This can be discouraging ... but very often such "mystery words" will just turn out to be unusual versions of verbs ....
doy is just the 1st person singular present of "dar"
sepan is just 3rd person plural of the present subjunctive of saber .
These would be much easier to spot if they appeared as "yo doy" and "ellos sepan" ... but Spanish mostly leaves them out .... they expect you to use the ending to work out whose doing it.
So ... what about these ...
cupe
haz
querré
supo
hagas
dio
puso
digas
habrá
oyeras
ve
vieron
tuviera
siendo
siga
hubo
den
dieron
hemos
puesto
sintáis
vayan
After all that, this ... La Ley with " Mentira" ... there's a lot of it about...
LOOKING WELSH WORDS UP IN YOUR LOVELY WELSH DICTIONARY
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG ?
In a previous life, or rather a previous blog, I did a wonderful thing. I wrote ... or rather, had a go at writing ..... a complete guide to looking up Welsh words in a dictionary. It took weeks for me to get back some semblance of my sanity, and several bottles of gin.
All you beginners out there will be thinking ... " What could possibly go wrong?"
Ha! You poor deluded numpties are in for a shock...... the Welsh language is especially designed to make it almost impenetrable to all outsiders, and trying to look words up in what they laughingly refer to as a dictionary can be, to say the least, trying.
For your delectation, I am going to try to recreate that terrific article, but with the added experience I have gained since .... negotiating that eponymous Rocky Road to Welsh! Here we go ....
Here's the scenario ..... you've got a Welsh word and you want to find out what it means.
The clever-arses always advise you to try to work out what it means from the context. Yeah, right! And I'm a spurgulent rimpletinker. So .....
You turn to your trusted dictionary ,and the bloody thing isn't in it. Here's a simple guide to what might have gone wrong......
[a] Maybe it's an obscure word .....try a succession of larger and larger dictionaries.
[b] If it starts with ch- you might be looking for it under c- which would be the wrong place.
[c] This also applies to rh- , ll- , ff- .
[d] Don't forget that a word with -ng- in it could have you looking in the wrong place.
[e] The word might have to have any possible mutation undone first.
[f] This is doubly tricky for some words beginning with f- which might begin with m- or b-
[g] This is easy to miss also when an invisible g- has to be restored to its rightful place.
[h] An "h" at the start might have been put there for a laugh ... especially after a vowel.
[i] Maybe it's a bit of obscure Wenglish.
[j] Sometimes they like to miss the ys- off a word to keep you thinking.
[k] Maybe you're looking at some wild and wonderful part of a verb.
[l] Or perhaps you've forgotten that verbs-with-endings will tend to SM.
[m] It could be you are looking at one of those peculiar plurals they are so fond of. [n] In colloquial Welsh in books, deliberate mis- spelling is another source of amusement.
[o] Could be you have a conjugated preposition .... lovely!
[p] One of the best tricks is the "frontal apostrophe." [ or 'tal 'phe ]
[q] Of course, it might be a rude word, or too slangy. Yes, there are rude words in Welsh.
[r] You can pull some words apart and find out what the bits mean..... oh yes!
[s] If it has a prefix, you can remove it and try to find what's left ( remove SM first)
[t] Could it be a proper name or a place-name?
[u] If it's a group of words you don't get, maybe it's a an idiomatic usage.
[t] Some words have different male and female versions ....
[u] Sometimes a tricky word might combine several of these difficulties.
[v] There can be unfamiliar literary Welsh endings.
[w] Sometimes you think a word is obviously Wenglish but it isn't !
[x ] You can always try ...
[a] Putting it into Google Translate
[b] Having a guess and looking it up in the English to Welsh section. ... it can work.
[c] Asking an actual Welsh speaker !
[d] Taking up a nice logical language like Spanish.
Y Diwedd ( The End)