One concept grammar nerds in English always wrestle with is the double negative. You know, when someone says something along the lines of I didn’t do nothing, actually meaning I didn’t do anything.
In Welsh, double negatives are actually the way to go! This is because Welsh is one of many languages that have what is called negative concord, meaning two negative words in a sentence affirm each other rather than cancelling each other out. This simple grammatical principle is key to understanding the use of many Welsh words, not least today’s word of the day, the pronoun neb (nobody / no-one).
neb
nobody
Neb is a child of the proto-Celtic *nekwos, meaning someone or anyone. Technically *nekwos was a compound word coming from, in proto-Indo-European, the negating particle *ne and the question word *kwos (who, which or what). Neb also exists in Cornish and Breton.
Let’s go through some examples of how neb works in a sentence.
Say you wanted to express, nobody wants to go out. The second part of the sentence is exactly what you’d expect – eisiau mynd allan (wanting to go out).
But instead of literally translating the nobody literally to just neb, we start the sentence does neb. As you may know, does is the conjugation of bod used to mean, roughly, there is not or there are not. You can read more about how does works here.
That means that the Welsh form of nobody wants to go out would literally translate in English to there isn’t nobody wanting to go out.
Does neb eisiau mynd allan.
Nobody wants to go out.
The double negative sounds funny in English, but it’s completely normal in Welsh! Every word in a negative sentence is converted into its negative form. Another good example is the classic adage nobody’s perfect. This, in Welsh, is does neb yn berffaith.
It also works when nobody or neb is the object of the sentence, rather than the subject, and in some of these cases, neb also works functionally as a translation of anybody. In English I know nobody and I don’t know anybody mean the same thing. In Welsh you’d eschew both of these, and instead say dydw i ddim yn nabod neb (or dwi’m yn nabod neb for short) – which literally means I am not knowing nobody.
You may hear people, in particular other learners, say dydw i ddim yn nabod unrhyw un, substituting unrhyw un (anybody) for neb (nobody). It’s an easy mistake to make, but remember: every word in a negative sentence is converted into its negative form. This has the interesting consequence that neb in Welsh is actually much more widely used than nobody in English, because in many English sentences we say anybody or anyone instead.
Pwy wnest ti gyfarfod? Neb llai na’r dug!
Who did you meet? None other than the duke!
Sometimes, the way to create the double negative is with the particle ni or na. Say we want to translate nobody saw the film. This would become ni welodd neb y ffilm (nobody didn’t see the film).
However, ni, like its affirmative equivalents mi and fe, also inserted before verbs, is usually dropped for simplicity in colloquial speech.
That would produce welodd neb y ffilm, so we’re seemingly right back to a literal translation of the English.
But don’t worry – this isn’t a variant to the negative concord rule. When you’re speaking or writing formally, you can continue to include ni, and even if you used it just when chatting to someone, it wouldn’t be wrong – it would just sound much less casual. This is just a pattern of speech that has evolved over time for convenience. It’s okay and doesn’t break our only-negatives rule because we’re not including a non-negative word, but just ‘missing out’ a negative word that is still implied.
Another example of this is if we transform the first sentence we looked at into different tenses.
Present
Mae rhywun eisiau mynd allan = Someone wants to go out.
Mae pawb eisiau mynd allan = Everyone wants to go out.
Does neb eisiau mynd allan = Nobody wants to go out.
The word mae has become does to match the negative meaning of the sentence.
Past
Roedd rhywun eisiau mynd allan = Someone wanted to go out.
Roedd pawb eisiau mynd allan = Everyone wanted to go out.
Doedd neb eisiau mynd allan = Nobody wanted to go out.
The word roedd has become doedd to match the negative meaning of the sentence.
Future
(Mi) fydd rhywun eisiau mynd allan = Someone will want to go out.
(Mi) fydd pawb eisiau mynd allan = Everyone will want to go out.
(Ni) fydd neb eisiau mynd allan = Nobody will want to go out.
The construction mi fydd has become ni fydd to match the negative meaning of the sentence, but both mi and ni can be dropped from their respective sentences, though the mutation they cause should remain.
As you can see, in all of them, the double negative is the standard, original form of the sentence. But we do sometimes drop the initial particle that makes that clear.
The same pattern occurs with phrases like dim byd (nothing).
Neb is part of a family of words that refer to counting and identifying people, like its antonym pawb (everybody), as well as rhywun (someone), unrhyw un (anyone), and pwy bynnag (whoever). We came across unrhyw un, sometimes written unrhywun, earlier – when I was warning you against it!
You can actually remember pawb and neb through a helpful idiom. This is cyfaill pawb, cyfaill neb, an equivalent of the English a friend to all is a friend to none. Not only is it a wise adage, but its concise expression in Welsh makes it a useful mnemonic.
Esboniodd nad oedd neb yn mwynhau’r gerddoriaeth.
She explained that nobody enjoyed the music.
Esboniodd fod rhywun wedi mwynhau’r gerddoriaeth.
She explained that somebody enjoyed the music.
Of course, the most important thing of all to remember when it comes to neb in Welsh is that pesky double negative. As with anything, you’ll get more and more of a feel for what sounds right as you continue to practise speaking and listening, but a really good rule of thumb is that there should be no what we call ‘affirmative’ words in the sentence. Convert your roedd to doedd, your fod to nad oes, and your unrhyw un to neb, and you’ll be good to go.
