Today’s Welsh word of the day is the verb credu (to believe). You may not immediately find credu an easy word to cofio (remember), because it’s quite different from its English translation. But it’ll instantly become a lot easier when you realise that it comes from the exact same root as the similar English nouns creed and credence! When you’re saying you credu something in Welsh, it’s like saying you give credence to it in English.
credu
to believe
That’s because going far back, all these words come from the proto-Indo-European root *kreddheti (to put one’s heart in). It’s rare that words share such obvious similarity based just on their common ancestry in proto-Indo-European – when we see clear parallels like this it usually comes from a word having borrowed into Welsh from Latin or directly from English.
Probably for the same reason, this is also one of those words which is very similar in all of the Celtic languages. Credu is krediñ in Breton, credjal in Manx, creid in Irish and Scots Gaelic, and kreji in Cornish.
Credu can take any of the three Welsh mutation classes:
Soft mutation
gredu
Nasal mutation
nghredu
Aspirate mutation
chredu
And the exact same mutation pattern usefully applies to coelio. If you haven’t come across coelio before, it’s a synonym of credo, but the difference in their use has little to do with formality or region, as is the case with many synonymous pairs in Welsh.
Instead, there’s a subtle variation in meaning. Coelio is more often – though not exclusively – used to refer to credau (beliefs) which are considered in some way invalid, fantastical or indeed evil, like dewiniaeth (sorcery / witchcraft).
This is reflected in the noun forms of the words: while cred means a belief but also a religion (though crefydd is usually used for this purpose), coel means a belief but also an omen. Another example is that credulity is coelgarwch: someone naïve and gullible is more likely to be described as coelio things, not credu them.
The two words are generally interchangeable, and you don’t need to worry about getting them ‘the wrong way around’, but when trying to convey shades of meaning you can use this slight difference in connotation to your advantage.
Mae’n anodd credu ei bod hi’n dal i garu o.
It’s hard to believe that she still loves him.
Cred and credu are part of an extensive etymological family:
- credadwy = believable
- anghredadwy = unbelievable
- credadwyedd = credibility
- credadwyaeth = credibility
- credwr = believer
- credadun = believer
- credyd = credit
Credyd is a bit of a cheeky inclusion by me because it doesn’t come from the same root in Welsh. It’s actually a borrowing of the English credit, and is used exclusively to refer to credit in a commercial and monetary sense. However, we now know that all these words are connected further back, so I thought it was worth putting it in there!
You can use the word credu – and the same for coelio – quite easily. Just as in English, you insert the thing that is believed directly after the verb, for example in the phrase ei chredu hi (to believe her), credu celwydd (to believe a lie, although of course coelio could be a great fit here too!) or credu’r peth (to believe the thing).
In more formal or literary Welsh, you may see the preposition i inserted in between credu and its object. This causes a soft mutation. Don’t worry too much about this; it is not considered necessary in modern standard Welsh, especially colloquially.
Talking about believing in something is also very simple; you just use the construction credu yn, which then causes a nasal mutation when possible, as in credu yng nghrefydd (to believe in a religion), credu yn y tylwyth teg (to believe in fairies), or credu yn Nuw (to believe in God). For these kinds of expressions, too, credu i may be used instead of credu yn in certain literary contexts.
Do‘n i’m yn gallu credu fy nghlustiau pan glywais y newyddion!
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the news!
Credu yn (believing in) something – whether it’s one of the examples above or something else – can give people a powerful sense of gobaith (hope) and perthyn (belonging).
Perhaps that’s why the Welsh use the phrase dal i gredu (still believing) when asked how they are. It’s similar to how we say can’t complain or still hanging on in English; it suggests a hint of optimism even when things get tough.
Here are some of the most common conjugations of credu:
| Future | Conditional | Past | |
| First person singular | Creda i I will believe | Credwn i I would believe | Credais i I believed |
| First person plural | Credwn ni We will believe | Creden ni We would believe | Credon ni We believed |
| Second person singular / informal | Credi di You will believe | Credet ti You would believe | Credaist ti You believed |
| Second person plural / formal | Credwch chi You will believe | Credech chi You would believe | Credoch chi You believed |
| Third person singular | Credith o/e/hi He / she will believe | Credai fo/fe/hi He / she would believe | Credodd o/e/hi He/she believed |
| Third person plural | Credan nhw They will believe | Creden nhw They would believe | Credon nhw They believed |
Plus, there are a couple of useful conjugations that don’t feature in the table above. One is the imperative: credwch if you are speaking to multiple people or formally, and cred if you are speaking to one person you know well. For example, believe you me is credwch chi fi or cred di fi, and believe it or not is credwch neu beidio or cred neu beidio.
The other is the impersonal tense. This is a way of translating phrases like she was dead, but it’s actually a lot more straight-forward than in English. The word is credwyd, and it expresses the phrase it was believed, without needing any other pronoun to refer to who or what was doing the credu – it simply states that a cred existed.
Credwyd ei bod hi wedi marw.
She was believed dead.
You can express this in other tenses, too. Most usefully, for the present tense and the future tense, the word would be credir.
It’s not too common in Welsh to say that you credu in something to express that you are in favour of it. For this, you could use phrases like dw i o blaid (literally I am of the party) or mae gen i ffydd yn (literally I have faith in). And, in this same semantic field, one trusty expression you’ll hear used all the time is yn fy marn i (in my opinion).
This brings me to the topic of similar but different verbs that you can use to talk about credau, thoughts, and opinions. Some great ones to memorise are:
- meddwl = to think
- gwybod = to know (of a fact, as opposed to a person)
- penderfynu = to decide
- amau = to doubt / to suspect
- ystyried = to consider
- ymddiried = to trust
- deall = to understand
Out of all of these, though, credu is actually one of the most important. This is because in Welsh, people often say dw i’n credu (I believe) when in English we would be more likely to say I think. For example:
Dw i’n credu y byddai’n well ganddi bapur wal coch.
I think she would prefer red wallpaper.
This makes this simple verb one of the most valuable in your Welsh arsenal! You can use it to introduce your opinion, or your judgement of a situation. You can also insert the phrase dw i’n credu (I believe) after a statement or a personal belief to indicate that it’s just your subjective take on things.
Can you use credu to introduce a cred or barn (opinion) of your own?
