- Source: Literary Welsh morphology
The morphology of the Welsh language shows many characteristics perhaps unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. Welsh is a moderately inflected language. Verbs conjugate for person, tense and mood with affirmative, interrogative and negative conjugations of some verbs. A majority of prepositions inflect for person and number. There are few case inflections in Literary Welsh, being confined to certain pronouns.
Modern Welsh can be written in two varieties – Colloquial Welsh or Literary Welsh. The grammar described on this article is for Literary Welsh.
Initial consonant mutation
Initial consonant mutation is a phenomenon common to all Insular Celtic languages (there is no evidence of it in the ancient Continental Celtic languages of the early first millennium). The first consonant of a word in Welsh may change depending on grammatical context (such as when the grammatical object directly follows the grammatical subject), when preceded by certain words, e.g. i, yn, and a or when the normal word order of a sentence is changed, e.g. Y mae tŷ gennyf, Y mae gennyf dŷ "I have a house".
Welsh has three mutations across four paradigms: the soft mutation (Welsh: treiglad meddal), the nasal mutation (Welsh: treiglad trwynol), and the aspirate (or spirant) mutation (Welsh: treiglad llaes); and the mixed mutation (Welsh: treiglad cymysg) where the aspirate mutation is applied where possible, else the soft mutation is applied. These are represented in writing, as shown in the table below along with their corresponding IPA symbols.
A blank cell indicates no change.
For example, the word for "stone" is carreg, but "the stone" is y garreg (soft mutation), "my stone" is fy ngharreg (nasal mutation) and "her stone" is ei charreg (aspirate mutation).
* The soft mutation for g is the simple deletion of the initial sound. For example, gardd "garden" becomes yr ardd "the garden". But this can behave as a consonant under certain circumstances, e.g. "gellir" (one can) becomes "ni ellir" (one cannot) not "*nid ellir". This however also stands alongside gardd ('a garden'), but yr ardd ('the garden') not *y ardd.
= Soft mutation
=The soft mutation (Welsh: treiglad meddal) is, by far, the most common mutation in Welsh. When words undergo soft mutation, the general pattern is that voiceless plosives become voiced plosives, voiced plosives become voiced fricatives, and voiceless liquids becomes voiced. The full list is shown in the above table.
Common situations where the full soft mutation occurs are as follows – this list is by no means exhaustive:
adjectives (and nouns used genitivally as adjectives) qualifying feminine singular nouns
words immediately following the prepositions am "for, about", ar "on", at "to", tan/dan "under", tros/dros "over", trwy/drwy "through", heb "without", hyd "until", gan "by", wrth "at", i "to, for", o "of, from"
nouns used with the number two (dau / dwy)
nouns following adjectives (N.B. most adjectives follow the noun)
nouns after the possessives dy, informal singular "your", and ei when it means "his"
an object of an inflected verb
the second element in many compound words
when an adverbial phrase comes between two elements, the second element is mutated (e.g. rhaid mynd "it is necessary to go" becomes rhaid i mi fynd "it is necessary to me to go")
verbs after the interrogative particle a (e.g. cerddaist "you walked", a gerddaist? "did you walk?")
In some cases a limited soft mutation takes place. This differs from the full soft mutation in that words beginning with rh and ll do not mutate.
Situations where the limited soft mutation occurs are as follows.
feminine singular nouns with the definite article or the number one (un)
nouns or adjectives used predicatively or adverbially after yn
adjectives following cyn or mor, both meaning "so"
after the prefixes can- and dar-
The occurrence of the soft mutation often obscures the origin of placenames to non-Welsh-speaking visitors. For example, Llanfair is the church of Mair (Mary, mother of Jesus), and Pontardawe is the bridge on the Tawe.
= Nasal mutation
=The nasal mutation (Welsh: treiglad trwynol) normally occurs:
after fy "my" e.g. gwely "a bed", fy ngwely "my bed"
after the locative preposition yn "in" e.g. Tywyn "Tywyn", yn Nhywyn "in Tywyn"
after the negating prefix an-, e.g. teg "fair", annheg "unfair".
Notes
In the spoken language the possessive adjective fy "my" is most often heard as if spelt y / yn (i.e. /ə ən/) or, in the presence of the nasal mutation, omitted all together - e.g. nhad "my father" (fy omitted), 'yn afal "my apple", 'y chwaer "my sister". In the literary language, however, it is always given as fy: fy nhad, fy afal, fy chwaer.
The preposition yn becomes ym if the following noun (mutated or not) begins with m, and yng if the following noun begins with ng, e.g. Bangor "Bangor", ym Mangor "in Bangor", Caerdydd "Cardiff", yng Nghaerdydd "in Cardiff".
In words beginning with an-, the n is dropped before the mutated consonant, e.g. an + personol "personal" → amhersonol "impersonal", although it is retained before a non-mutating letter, e.g. an + sicr "certain" → ansicr "uncertain", or if the resultant mutation allows for a double n, e.g. an + datod "undo" → annatod "integral". (This final rule does not apply to words that would potentially produce a cluster of four consonants, e.g. an + trefn "order" → anhrefn "disorder", not *annhrefn.)
Under nasal mutation, voiced stop consonants become voiced nasals, and plain stops become voiceless nasals.
Grammatical considerations
Yn meaning "in" must be distinguished from other uses of yn which do not cause nasal mutation. For example:
In the sentence Mae plastig yn nhrwyn Siaco, trwyn has undergone nasal mutation.
In the sentence Mae trwyn Siaco yn blastig, plastig has undergone soft, not nasal, mutation.
In the sentence Mae trwyn Siaco yn cynnwys plastig, cynnwys is not mutated.
The ’m form often used instead of fy after vowels does not cause nasal mutation. For example:
Pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad. (not *i'm ngwlad)
= Aspirate mutation
=The aspirate mutation (Welsh: traiglad llaes) turns the voiceless plosives into voiceless fricatives. In writing, the aspirate mutation is shown by an addition of an h in the spelling (c, p, t → ch, ph, th), the resultant forms are single phonemes: (/k p t/ → /χ f θ/).
The aspirate mutation occurs:
after the possessive adjective ei when it means "her"
after a "and"
after â "with, by means of"
after the preposition gyda "with"
for masculine nouns after the number three (tri)
after the number six (chwe)
Notes
The aspirate mutation resulting from ei "her" distinguishes it from ei "his" (which causes soft mutation) - e.g. ei thad hi "her father" (as opposed to ei dad ef "his father").
a "and" and â "with, by means of" become ac and ag before vowels, respectively - e.g. ac afal "and an apple"; paid ag aros "don't wait".
gyda "with" becomes gydag before a vowel and is also seen shortened to 'da / 'dag. In the spoken language, gyda(g) is restricted to Southern dialects (with the exception of a few set phrases) and is often replaced by efo or gan in the North depending on usage; the literary language, however, prefers the use of gyda(g).
Feminine nouns are preceded by the numeral tair, not tri; tair does not cause mutation - e.g. tair cath "three cats", but tri chi "three dogs".
The Welsh numeral chwech becomes chwe before a noun. This is similar to the numeral pump which is always pum before a noun - e.g. chwe gwlad "six nations", chwe threiglad "six mutations", chwech o blant "six children".
= Mixed mutation
=A mixed mutation occurs after the particles ni (before a vowel nid), na (before a vowel nad) and oni (before a vowel onid) which negate verbs. Initial consonants which can take the aspirate mutation do so; other consonants take the soft mutation if possible - all other consonants do not mutate. For example, clywais "I heard" is negated as ni chlywais "I did not hear", na chlywais "that I did not hear" and oni chlywais? "did I not hear?", whereas dywedais "I said" is negated as ni ddywedais, na ddywedais and oni ddywedais?.
In the modern spoken language, the aspirate mutation is declining and is (outside of set phrases) often omitted or replaced by the soft mutation. However, in the formal literary language (here presented) all mutations are preserved and used as expected without regional or dialectal intrusion.
= Phonetic values of mutated phonemes
=The true phonetic values of some of the Welsh phonemes, particularly /ŋ̊ n̥ m̥/ are often debated in academia. It is often claimed that the voiceless nasals are actually aspirated [/ŋ̊ʰ n̥ʰ m̥ʰ]. The value of Welsh ⟨ch⟩ is also often debated as to whether it has the underlying value /χ/ or /x/; regardless of its underlying value, it is often heard as [x] in the South and [χ] in the North.
The article
Welsh has no indefinite article. The definite article, which precedes the words it modifies and whose usage differs little from that of English, has the forms y, yr, and ’r. The rules governing their usage are:
When the previous word ends in a vowel, regardless of the quality of the word following, ’r is used, e.g. mae'r gath tu allan ("the cat is outside"). This rule takes precedence over the other two below.
When the word begins with a vowel, yr is used, e.g. yr arth "the bear".
In all other places, y is used, e.g. y bachgen ("the boy").
The letter w represents both a consonant /w/ and the vowels /u/ and /ʊ/ - a preceding definite article will reflect this by following the rules above, e.g. y wal /ə ˈwal/ "the wall" but yr wy /ər ˈʊˑɨ/ or /ər ˈʊi/ "the egg". However, pre-vocalic yr is used before both the consonantal and vocalic values represented by i, e.g. yr iâr /ər ˈjaːr/ "the hen" and yr ing /ər ˈiŋ/ "the anguish". It is also always used before the consonant h, e.g. yr haf /ər ˈhaːv/ "the summer".
The first rule may be applied with greater or less frequency in various literary contexts. For example, poetry might use ’r more often to help with metre, e.g. ’R un nerth sydd yn fy Nuw "The same power is in my God" from a hymn by William Williams Pantycelyn. On the other hand, sometimes its use is more restricted in very formal contexts, e.g. Wele, dyma y rhai annuwiol "Behold, these are the ungodly" in Psalm 73.12.
The article triggers the soft mutation when it is used with feminine singular nouns, e.g. tywysoges "(a) princess" becomes y dywysoges "the princess", but no mutation in the plural: y tywysogesau "the princesses".
Nouns
Like most Indo-European languages, all nouns belong to a certain grammatical gender; in this case, masculine or feminine. A noun's gender conforms to its referent's natural gender when it has one, e.g. mam "mother" is feminine. There are also semantic, morphological and phonological clues to help determine a noun's gender, e.g. llaeth "milk" is masculine as are all liquids, priodas "wedding" is feminine because it ends in the suffix -as, and theatr "theatre" is feminine because the stressed vowel is an e. Many everyday nouns, however, possess no such clues.
Sometimes a noun's gender may vary depending on meaning, for example gwaith when masculine means "work", but when feminine, it means "occasion, time". The words for languages behave like feminine nouns (i.e. mutate) after the article, e.g. y Gymraeg "the Welsh language", but as masculine nouns (i.e. without mutation of an adjective) when qualified, e.g. Cymraeg da "good Welsh". The gender of some nouns depends on a user's dialect, and although in the literary language there is some standardization, some genders remain unstable, e.g. tudalen "page".
Welsh has two systems of grammatical number. Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system of English, although unlike English, Welsh noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways. Some nouns form the plural with an ending (usually -au), e.g. tad and tadau. Others form the plural through vowel change, e.g. bachgen and bechgyn. Still others form their plurals through some combination of the two, e.g. chwaer and chwiorydd.
Several nouns have two plural forms, e.g. the plural of stori "story" is either storïau or straeon. This can help distinguish meaning in some cases, e.g. whereas llwyth means both "tribe" and "load", llwythau means "tribes" and llwythi means "loads".
The other system of grammatical number is the collective/singulative. The nouns in this system form the singulative by adding the suffix -yn (for masculine nouns) or -en (for feminine nouns) to the collective noun. Most nouns which belong in this system are frequently found in groups, for example, plant "children" and plentyn "a child", or coed "trees, forest" and coeden "a tree", ffawydd "a beechwood, beech trees, beeches" and ffawydden "a beech tree". In dictionaries, the collective form, being the root form, is given first.
Adjectives
Adjectives normally follow the noun they qualify, e.g. mab ieuanc "(a) young son", while a small number precede it, usually causing soft mutation, e.g. hen fab "(an) old son". The position of an adjective may even determine its meaning, e.g. mab unig "(a) lonely son" as opposed to unig fab "(an) only son". In poetry, however, and to a lesser extent in prose, most adjectives may occur before the noun they modify, but this is a literary device. It is also seen in some place names, such as Harlech (hardd + llech) and Glaslyn.
When modifying a noun (i.e. in an attributive construction) belonging to the feminine, adjectives undergo soft mutation, for example, bach "small" and
following the masculine noun bwrdd and the feminine noun bord, both meaning "table":
For the most part, adjectives are uninflected, though there are a few with distinct masculine/feminine and/or singular/plural forms. A feminine adjective is formed from a masculine by means of vowel change, usually "w" to "o" (e.g. crwn "round" to cron) or "y" to "e" (e.g. gwyn "white" to gwen). A plural adjective may employ vowel change (e.g. marw "dead" to meirw), take a plural ending (e.g. coch "red" to cochion) or both (e.g. glas "blue, green" to gleision).
Adjective comparison in Welsh is fairly similar to the English system except that there is an additional degree, the equative (Welsh y radd gyfartal). Native adjectives with one or two syllables usually receive the endings -ed "as/so" (preceded by the word cyn in a sentence, which causes a soft mutation except with ll and rh: cyn/mor daled â chawr, "as tall as a giant"), -ach "-er" and -af "-est". The stem of the adjective may also be modified when inflected, including by provection, where final or near-final b, d, g become p, t, c respectively.
Generally, adjectives with two or more syllables use a different system, whereby the adjective is preceded by the words mor "as/so" (which causes a soft mutation except with ll and rh), mwy "more" and mwyaf "most".
The literary language tends to prefer the use inflected adjectives where possible.
There are also a number of irregular adjectives.
These are the possessive adjectives:
The possessive adjectives precede the noun they qualify, which is sometimes followed by the corresponding form of the personal pronoun, especially to emphasize the possessor, e.g. fy mara i "my bread", dy fara di "your bread", ei fara ef "his bread" etc.
Ein, eu and feminine ei add an h a following word beginning with a vowel, e.g. enw "name", ei henw "her name".
The demonstrative adjectives are inflected for gender and number:
These follow the noun they qualify, which also takes the article. For example, the masculine word llyfr "book" becomes y llyfr hwn "this book", y llyfr hwnnw "that book", y llyfrau hyn "these books" and y llyfrau hynny "those books".
Pronouns
= Personal pronouns
=The Welsh personal pronouns are:
The Welsh masculine-feminine gender distinction is reflected in the pronouns. There is, consequently, no word corresponding to English "it", and the choice of e or hi depends on the grammatical gender of the antecedent.
The English dummy or expletive "it" construction in phrases like "it's raining" or "it was cold last night" also exists in Welsh and other Indo-European languages like French, German, and Dutch, but not in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or the Slavic languages. Unlike other masculine-feminine languages, which often default to the masculine pronoun in the construction, Welsh uses the feminine singular hi, thus producing sentences like:
Mae hi'n bwrw glaw.
It's raining.
Yr oedd hi'n oer neithiwr.
It was cold last night.
Notes on the forms
The usual third-person masculine singular form is ef in Literary Welsh. The form fe is used as an optional affirmative marker before a conjugated verb at the start of a clause, but may also be found elsewhere in modern writing, influenced by spoken Welsh.
The traditional third-person plural form is hwy, which may optionally be expanded to hwynt where the previous word does not end in -nt itself. Once more, modern authors may prefer to use the spoken form nhw, although this cannot be done after literary forms of verbs and conjugated prepositions.
Similarly, there is some tendency to follow speech and drop the "w" from the second-person plural pronoun chwi in certain modern semi-literary styles.
In any case, pronouns are often dropped in the literary language, as the person and number can frequently be discerned from the verb or preposition alone.
Ti vs. chwi
Chi, in addition to serving as the second-person plural pronoun, is also used as a singular in formal situations. Conversely, ti can be said to be limited to the informal singular, such as when speaking with a family member, a friend, or a child. This usage corresponds closely to the practice in other European languages. The third colloquial form, chdi, is not found in literary Welsh.
Reflexive pronouns
The reflexive pronouns are formed with the possessive adjective followed by hunan (plural hunain) "self".
There is no gender distinction in the third person singular.
Reduplicated pronouns
Literary Welsh has reduplicated pronouns that are used for emphasis, usually as the subject of a focussed sentence. For example:
Tydi a'n creodd ni.
"(It was) You that created us."
Oni ddewisais i chwychwi?
"Did I not choose you?"
Conjunctive pronouns
Welsh has special conjunctive forms of the personal pronouns. They are perhaps more descriptively termed 'connective or distinctive pronouns' since they are used to indicate a connection between or distinction from another nominal element. Full contextual information is necessary to interpret their function in any given sentence.
Less formal variants are given in brackets. Mutation may also, naturally, affect the forms of these pronouns (e.g. minnau may be mutated to finnau)
The emphatic pronouns can be used with possessive adjectives in the same way as the simple pronouns are used (with the added function of distinction or connection).
= Demonstrative pronouns
=In addition to having masculine and feminine forms of this and that, Welsh also has separate set of this and that for intangible, figurative, or general ideas.
In certain expressions, hyn may represent "now" and hynny may represent "then".
Verbs
In literary Welsh, far less use is made of auxiliary verbs than in its colloquial counterpart. Instead conjugated forms of verbs are common. Most distinctively, the non-past tense is used for the present as well as the future.
The preterite, non-past (present-future), and imperfect (conditional) tenses have forms that are somewhat similar to colloquial Welsh, demonstrated here with talu 'pay'. There is a regular affection of the a to e before the endings -ais, -aist, -i, -ir and -id.
To these, the literary language adds pluperfect, subjunctive, and imperative forms with affection before -wyf and -wch.
= Irregular verbs
=Bod and compounds
Bod ("to be") is highly irregular. Compared with the inflected tenses above, it has separate present and future tenses, separate present and imperfect subjunctive tenses, separate imperfect and conditional tenses, and uses the pluperfect as a consuetudinal imperfect (amherffaith arferiadol) tense. The third person of the present tense has separate existential (oes, no plural because plural nouns take a singular verb) and descriptive (yw/ydyw, ŷnt/ydynt) forms, except in the situations where the positive (mae, maent) or relative (sydd) forms are used in their place.
In less formal styles, the affirmative/indirect relative (y(r)), interrogative/direct relative (a), and negative (ni(d)) particles have a particularly strong tendency to become infixed on the front of forms of bod, for instance roedd and dyw for yr oedd and nid yw. Although the literary language tends toward keeping the particles in full, affirmative y is optional before mae(nt).
Reduplicating the negation of the verb with ddim (which in the literary language strictly means "any" rather than "not") is generally avoided.
Certain other verbs with bod in the verb-noun are also to some extent irregular. By far the most irregular are gwybod ("to know (a fact)") and adnabod ("to recognize/know (a person)"); but there also exists a group of verbs that alternate -bu- (in the preterite and pluperfect) and -bydd- (in all other tenses) stems, namely canfod ("to perceive"), cydnabod ("to acknowledge"), cyfarfod ("to meet"), darfod ("to perish"), darganfod ("to discover"), gorfod ("to be obliged"), and hanfod ("to descend/issue from").
Therefore, presented below are gwybod and adnabod in the tenses where they do not simply add gwy- or adna- to forms of bod. That they both, like bod, separate the present and future tenses. A regular feature of this mood is the devoicing of b to p before the subjunctive endings,.
Mynd, gwneud, cael, and dod
The four verbs mynd "to go", gwneud "to do", cael "to get", and dod "to come" are all irregular. These share many similarities, but there are also far more points of difference in their literary forms than in their spoken ones. Each also has at least one other verbal-noun form of which the colloquial forms are contractions: mynd / myned; dod / dyfod / dywad / dŵad; cael / caffael / caffel; gwneud / gwneuthur. Literary Welsh is remarkable in that it has imperative forms of cael which are absent from the spoken language.
Prepositions
In Welsh, prepositions frequently change their form when followed by a pronoun. These are known as inflected prepositions. They fall into three main conjugations.
Firstly those in -a- (at, am (stem: amdan-), ar, tan/dan):
Secondly those in -o- (er, heb, rhag, rhwng (stem: rhyng-), tros/dros, trwy/drwy (stem: trw-/drw-), o (stem: ohon-), yn). All apart from o add a linking element in the third person (usually -dd-, but -ydd- in the case of trwy/drwy, and -t- in the case of tros/dros):
Thirdly, those in -y- (gan and wrth). Gan includes both vowel changes and a linking element, while wrth has neither:
Finally, the preposition i is highly irregular:
All inflected prepositions may optionally be followed by the appropriate personal pronouns, apart from i, where this is only possible in the third person, thanks to its proper endings in the other persons sounding the same as the pronouns. In slightly less formal Welsh, the endings are split off the first and second persons of i to be interpreted as pronouns instead, although this creates the anomalous pronoun mi.
The majority of prepositions (am, ar, at, gan, heb, hyd, i, o, tan/dan, tros/dros, trwy/drwy, wrth) trigger the soft mutation. The exceptions are â, gyda, and tua, which cause the aspirate mutation; yn, which causes the nasal mutation; and cyn, ger, mewn, rhag, and rhwng, which do not cause any mutation.
Notes
References
Jones, Morgan D. A Guide to Correct Welsh (Llandysul: Gomer, 1976). ISBN 0-85088-441-1.
King, G. (2003). Modern Welsh. Oxford: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28270-5
Lewis, D. Geraint. Y Llyfr Berfau (Llandysul: Gomer, 1995). ISBN 978-1-85902-138-5.
Thomas, Peter Wynn. Gramadeg y Gymraeg (Cardiff: UWP, 1996). ISBN 0-7083-1345-0.