Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales

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Mutation is not triggered by the form of the preceding word; the meaning and grammatical function of the word are also relevant. For example, while yn meaning "in" triggers nasal mutation, homonyms of yn do not. For example: Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool and has been living in west Wales for a quarter of a century. Author of many works of fiction, memoir, travelogue, and poetry, his words are translated into twenty languages and he has won the Wales Book of the Year twice, most recently in 2020, for Broken Ghost. I’ve always been comfortable being in a space where I don’t fully understand what other people are saying,” she said. “In the UK we have several minoritised languages as well as languages that are spoken by second and third generation people, and I think it’s a really important step forward for us to start seeing ourselves as a multilingual, multicultural nation.” Under some circumstances an h is added to the beginning of words that begin with vowels, a process commonly called ' h-prothesis' and usually called pre-vocalic aspiration (PVA) by linguists. This occurs after the possessive pronouns ei ("her"), ein ("our") and eu ("their"), e.g. oedran ("age"), ei hoedran hi ("her age"). It also occurs with ugain ("twenty") after ar ("on") in the traditional vigesimal counting system, e.g. un ar hugain ("twenty-one", literally "one on twenty"). FelinFach Home All about Wales Welsh National Anthem Calon Lân Useful Welsh Words Welsh for Good Morning Welsh for Good Afternoon Welsh for Good Night Welsh for Hello Welsh for Thank You

While the singular demonstrative pronouns this and that have separate forms for masculine and feminine, there is only a single plural form in each case ( these, those). This is consistent with a general principle in Welsh that gender is not marked in the plural. The latter forms are also often used for intangible, figurative, or general ideas (though cf. also the use of 'hi' discussed above). It may be more fruitful to search for part of a word rather than for a whole word since the alternate versions that appear will provide greater choice. For example a search for "near" as part of a word will also provide translations for 'nearly, nearby, near to, to get near', and many others, whilst "multi" as part of a word will return more that 55 offerings, but multi as a whole world will only suggest one form Wyt ti wedi ei weld e/fe/o/fo heddiw? Have you seen him today? Alla i ddim dod o hyd i fy allweddi i/fi. I can't find my keys. In words beginning with an-, the n is dropped before the mutated consonant (except if the resultant mutation allows for a double n), e.g. an + personol → amhersonol (although it would be retained before a non-mutating consonant, e.g. an + sicr → ansicr).

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True. And those words “Britain first” — an unfortunate pairing, these days. Capitalise the “first” and, yes, there are many descriptors in the Cymraeg, but you won’t find them in the dictionary. No Britain First for the first Britons. Nonetheless, there have been times when Wales has been badly treated and let down by rule from England. Perhaps more damaging than dismissive and patronising attitudes to the Welsh language and Welsh people has been central government’s marginalisation of the Welsh economy. As the days of heavy industry drew to an end, little substantive was done to revive the fortunes of communities built around mines, metalworks or quarries that no longer existed. Many in Wales are much happier hearing about these slights than the more nuanced picture of the past painted by historians. The majority of words, it appears, takes the plural ending -au. Here are some examples. And keep an eye on those sound changes! agoriad (key, opening) 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 unvoiced plosives become voiced plosives, and voiced plosives become fricatives or disappear; some fricatives also change, and the full list is shown in the above table. We Bleed Red by Joe Dunthorne - a hilarious and insightful essay about feeling Welsh when your accent doesn't sound it, and when your connection to Wales feels tenuous at best. I related to this one on an almost embarrassing level.

a b King, Gareth (2016) [1993]. "54-92 Nouns–Noun Number". Modern Welsh – A Comprehensive Grammar (Thirded.). London and New York: Routledge. pp.49–77. ISBN 978-1-138-82630-4. In Welsh, plurals are formed by adding suffixes to the singular form of nouns. There are several plural suffixes, and the choice of suffix depends on the noun's gender and ending. It is also essential to keep in mind that Welsh has a system of mutated consonants that can affect the spelling and pronunciation of words. Although aspirate mutation also involves the addition of h in spelling, the environments for aspirate mutation and initial h addition do not overlap except for ei ("her").

One of my formative experiences in folk music was attending an annual week-long course for young people at an outdoor education centre in north Wales. Before I arrived the first time, harp in tow, I was very much under the impression that I was the only young Welsh folk musician left in Wales. So what I found came as a bit of a rude awakening. There were about 50 other teenagers filling every corner of the centre with jigs and reels, singing folk songs in improvised four-part harmony until 3am. I spent most of my first visit hiding on the top bunk in my room, but over the years I began to feel more and more at home in this noisy, frenetic community of passionate young musicians. And for all the diversity in these essays where were the voices of working class, English speaking South Wales? As a nation we voted for Brexit, but you would struggle to realise that from this collection of essays. 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" and coeden "a tree". In dictionaries, the collective form, being the root form, is given first.

For many people, Wales brings to mind the same old collection of images – if it’s not rugby, sheep and leeks, it’s the 3 Cs: castles, coal, and choirs. Heritage, mining and the church are indeed integral parts of Welsh culture. But what of the other stories that point us toward a Welsh future? In this anthology of essays, authors offer imaginative, radical perspectives on the future of Wales as they take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness.Note that nouns ending in "-en" and "-in" in their singular form can have either of the masculine or feminine endings "-au" or "-od." Third-person masculine singular forms o and fo are heard in parts of mid- and north Wales, while e and fe are heard in parts of mid-, west and south Wales. a b c d e King, Gareth (2016) [1993]. "443-476 Prepositions". Modern Welsh – A Comprehensive Grammar (Thirded.). London and New York: Routledge. pp.335–373. ISBN 978-1-138-82630-4.