Welsh Word of the Day: Adeg (a time / an occasion / a period)

Adeg is a bit of a hard one to translate, because it doesn’t correspond perfectly to any single English word. Really it means time, but only in a very specific sense. Time in the abstract sense that usually first comes to mind is amser, as in expressions such as amser maith yn ôl (a long time ago) or cadw’r amser (keeping time).

Instead, adeg indicates a specific point in time, as in an occasion or a season. It is a feminine noun with the plural adegau.

You may hear the word said in three separate ways – the standard pronunciation, a version with a longer initial vowel that’s more common in South Wales, and the colloquial Northern form with an a instead of an e in the second syllable. Here are examples of how all three sound:

Adeg’s ultimate ancestor is the hypothesised proto-Indo-European word *het-i-keh (to go). This means something quite different to time. In most Indo-European languages, including Welsh, as the word evolved, its meaning shifted from going to time going to simply time. The Latin word annus, which had quite a substantial impact on English, is also a descendant of *het.

There are quite a few words that are similar in meaning to adeg.

• tymor = a season or a term
• tro = a turn, a time or a walk
• pryd = a specific time, also when as a question word
• achlysur = an occasion or an event
• oes = a long period of time, often of someone’s life
• gwaith = time as in two times, also work
• cyfnod = a period or an era

As you can see, the whole range of amser vocabulary works quite differently in Welsh compared to English. Some of these words are interchangeable, but in some circumstances it will sound incorrect to say one when you really mean another.

You will get the best sense of what works best by consuming lots of Welsh-language content, plus practising and making mistakes! But for the rest of this article we’ll talk through some examples of the use of adeg to get that journey started – hopefully by the time we’ve finished, you’ll feel more confident to try using this word in sentences.

So we use adeg to refer to a specific time, which may be of the dydd (day), as in a shop’s adeg cau (closing time), of y flwyddyn (the year), as in adeg yr haf (summertime), or even of all hanes (history), as in adeg rhyfel (wartime).

If we want to say that something happened in or at a specific adeg, we can use the preposition ar (on), although it is also fine to have no preposition at all. For example, he goes home at Christmastime could be either mae o’n mynd adref adeg y Nadolig or mae o’n mynd adref ar adeg y Nadolig.

Speaking of ar adeg, you can also say ar adegau in formal contexts to mean at times. Speaking casually, you will usually want weithiau (sometimes) instead.

The full phrase yr adeg honno (that time / at that time) is also a handy one to know. Notice that the feminine form of that, honno, is used here, because adeg is a feminine noun. This is interchangeable with ar y pryd (at the time / at that time), but what you don’t want to do is use amser in this context – it’s a common mistake, but it sounds unnatural.

This time or at this time is yr adeg hon, and when translating this phrase and yr adeg honno into English, you could also substitute time for occasion.

Other useful grammatical phrases involving adeg include ryw adeg (some time / at some point),cyn ei adeg / cyn ei hadeg (before his time / before her time), hyd at yr adeg honno (thitherto / up to that time),o’r adeg honno (thenceforth / from that time onward), drwy’r adeg (all the time), and bob adeg (at all times).

We don’t use adeg to refer to time in an abstract, philosophical sense, or to describe the length of a period of time. We also don’t use it to ask what time it is, though we don’t use amser here either – we say faint o’r gloch yw hi? (literally what of the clock is it?)

When speaking about hanes, the words adeg and cyfnod are often interchangeable to refer to a period or an age. Sometimes oes is used here too, especially in the names of specific Ages, such as y Canol Oesoedd / yr Oesoedd Canol (the Middle Ages) or Oes yr Iâ (the Ice Age). But you might use adeg in phrases like gwisg yr adeg (the fashion of the age) or adeg y newyn (the period of the famine).

It also refers to periods of time sometimes when talking about busnes (business) and the cycle of y flwyddyn, as in phrases like yr adeg brysur (the busy season) and yr adeg dawel (the quiet season).

If you’re up to the challenge, see if you can write two sentences in the comments below – one that uses adeg and one that uses amser. It’s often very tricky to get one’s head around words that differ drastically between the native and target language, but on the other hand, it’s mastering those concepts that brings the greatest sense of achievement, too.