John Morris Jones

“ Personal endings.— (1) The Ar. verb had personal endings for each of the three persons of the sg., dual and pl. These were either primary or secondary; and the primary endings differed to some extent for thematic and athematic stems. There were special endings for the perfect.
In the following list I omit the dual; and as the thematic vowel cannot be separated from the ending in some primary forms, I insert the vowel before the ending through­out, separat­ing it by a hyphen, where possible, from the personal ending proper: all the persons of thematic stems are thus put on the same level. ”

“ The obscure sound of y is the sound of the Eng. o in ivory. It is medium or short in the penult, or short in an unaccented syllable. It is long in the penult before a vowel or h as cý-oedd, cý-hoedd, and in the name of the letter y.
☞ In this grammar the character y is used as in ordinary written Welsh to represent both the clear and the obscure sound; but when it is required to distinguish between them, the character ɥ is used to denote the clear, and ỿ to denote the obscure sound.—Note that y is the clear ɥ in the diphthong w͡y, and when circumflexed, ŷ. ”

“ Welsh has no z; such a pronunciation as zêl ‘zeal’ is pure affectation; unsophisticated persons say sêl, selog. Before i̯ as in eisi̯au, s now tends to become Eng. sh, and in some S.W. dialects after i. But many old speakers cannot pronounce shibboleth at all. Standard Welsh s is the ss in hiss.
x. Aspirate: h. The aspirate is distinctly sounded, and is never misused except in Gwent and Glamorgan. It is really the voiceless form of the vowel which follows it, or the glide between a voiceless nasal or liquid and a vowel. ”

“ Some roots have more than one ungraded form; thus radical ā may stand beside radical ō, as in *arā- or *arō- ‘scratch, bite; plough, dig’: Lat. arā-re has F *arā- of the first, Gk. ἄροτρον has R *arə- of the second. The F of both, with ‐d- extension, occurs in Lat. rād-o, rōd-o. Beside ā we have sometimes to assume a, as in Skr. rádati ‘scratches, digs’ (not ə here, which gives i in Skr.) . In many cases all the forms cannot be explained without assuming an alternation of long and short vowel in the root; this may have come about by false analogy. ”

“ There is an Italo-Keltic root of some such form as *qu̯rēi- which means 'chalk' or 'white earth', giving Lat. crēta, and W. pridd 'loam', Irish crē; the attempt to derive the Welsh and Irish words from the Latin is a failure​—​the root must be Keltic as well as Italic; and it may have yielded the name Pritannia meaning 'the island of the white cliffs'.
§ 4. i. Gaulish and British are known to us through names on coins, and words and names quoted by Greek and Latin authors. No inscriptions occur in British, but British names are found in Latin inscriptions. ”

“ The difference between a secondary accent and a separate accent should be noted. A secondary accent is always subordinate to the principal accent; but when the first element of a compound has a separate accent it is independent of the accent of the second element and may even be stronger if the emphasis requires it. Again, the first element when separately accented has the unmutated ai, au, w, or ɥ in its final syllable ”

“ A short vowel (but no long vowel) was liable to be affected by a sound in a succeeding syllable. Affection is of two kinds in Welsh : 1. ultimate, when it takes place in the syllable which is now the last, having been brought about by a sound in a lost termination; 2. non-ultimate, when it takes place in the present penult or antepenult, the affecting sound being generally preserved in the ultima. Ultimate affection is caused by a or i sounds ”

“ A parent language is not necessarily isolated; analogy rather suggests the contrary. As Latin, which is the parent of the Romance languages, is derived from Aryan and allied to the other Aryan languages, so Aryan itself must be derived from some remote ancestor, and it is improbable that it is the only descendant of it which survived. ”

“ Similarly, the languages of each branch may be referred to a common parent called Primitive Keltic, Primitive Italic, Primitive Germanic, etc., as the case may be. Some of the above branches are perhaps to be regarded rather as groups; Indian and Iranian are often classified together as the Indo-Iranian branch; and the common features of Keltic and Italic are such as to render it certain that the two branches were united and shared the same development for a period after their separation from the others; hence we may classify them together as Italo-Keltic ”

“ Later, noson and dwthwn were wrested from this context, and taken to mean simply ‘night’ and ‘day’; e.g. a dreuliodd y dwthwn yn sanctaidd rh.b.s. 215 translat­ing “who has spent his day holily”.
iv. (1) The forms yr hwn, yr hon and yr hyn (but not *yr hwnnw etc.) are used before the relative, meaning, with the latter, ‘the one who’ or ‘he who’, ‘she who’, and ‘that which’; in the pl. y rhai ‘the ones’ is used, which is more strictly the pl. of yr un ‘the one’; the latter is similarly employed, as are also y neb, y sawl and definite nouns like y gŵr Ps. ”

“ But, as we have seen, the orthography of O. and Early Ml. W. is so irregular that no such plan is possible. Accordingly, for these periods, the form in the ms. is given, followed, where necessary, by a transcription introduced by the sign ≡, giving the probable sound in modern characters.
The works of Early Mn. poets are often found in late mss. and printed books containing not only dialectal forms inconsistent with the forms implied by the rhymes of the bards, but also late inventions, such as ei, eich, etc. In these cases the spelling has been standardized in the quotations in this work. ”

“ These nouns do not change their gender by the addition of gwryw ‘male’ or benyw ‘female’, as old-fashioned grammarians taught. In eryr benyw ‘female eagle’ the non-mutation of the b- of benyw shows that eryr remains mas. In fact the gender of a noun must be ascertained before gwryw or benyw can be added to it.
ii. There are however several nouns of common gender in Welsh, that is, nouns whose gender varies according to the sex of the individual meant. Such are dyn ‘man’ or ‘woman’, dynan ‘little person’, cyfyrder ‘second cousin’, wyr ‘grandchild’, tyst ‘witness’ (< Lat. testis com.) ”

“ The 'bardic alphabet' called coelbren y beirdd was a conventional simplification of ordinary characters adapted for cutting on wood; its letters are derived from the handwriting of the period, as b, ∂, (= e) , h, n, r, except where it was easier to adapt the Latin capitals, as A, G. With one or two exceptions, such as Ỻ, the "derived characters" denoting consonant mutations, so far from proving the coelbren's antiquity, are its very latest development, Pughe acknowledging himself to be the author of five of them (l.g.c. 260 footnote) . ”

“ The most probable explanation of the above forms seems to be that they are adjec­tives formed from adverbs of place, which were made by adding a ‐d (h) - suffix, § 162 vi (2) , to *sem‐, *som‐: Skr. samá‐ḥ ‘same’, Gk. ὁμός, Ir. som ‘ipse’. The form of the adverb would be similar to that of Skr. sa-há ‘in the same place together’ < *sm̥-dhe; but the Kelt. forma­tions have the full grades *sem‐, *som- (instead of the R‐grade *sm̥‐) and the demon­strative meaning (‘in this place, here’) . For the formation of an adj. *sendos from an adv. *sende cf. Lat. supernus: superne, and cf. ”

“ But where the position of the accent has to be indicated, ˉ́ is used; where there is no need to point out the accent, and the word is not usually circumflexed, ˉ is used. As every long vowel must be accented in Mn. W., it will be understood that ˉ, ˉ́ and ˆ in Mn. W. words mean the same thing. In Brit. and earlier a vowel marked ˉ is not necessarily accented. As ` is required to denote a secondary accent it would be confusing to use it to mark a short accented vowel; hence ̆́ is used here for the latter purpose, where necessary. The accent mark ́ denotes accent without reference to quantity. ”

“ Either of the elements of a compound may be a noun (n) or an adjective (a) ; thus we have four possible types: 1. n-n; 2. a-n; 3. a-a; 4. n-a. The formation of compounds of these types is an ordinary gram­matical construc­tion, and any elements may be combined if they make sense, whether the combi­nation is in general use or not. The relation to one another of the elements and the meaning of the resulting compound must be left to be dealt with in the Syntax; here, only the forms of compounds can be consid­ered.
ii. (1) The second element of a compound has its initial softened ”

“ The occurrence of a number of examples like vy martrin 67, wy duu 82, vy dewis, vy Devs 42, is probably due to the influence of the regular non-mutation of p, t. We do not seem to meet with such forms as vyn drwc, vym bryd which appear in later mss.; vy is written as an open syllable, and p, t, k are not mutated after it. The later mutation of these is analogical; the mutation caused by fy in the mediae was extended to the tenues in imitation of the complete and consistent system of mutation after yn. ”

“ The two sounds eu and au occur in the same positions in the word as ei and ai respectively; see § 81.
Vowel variation in Modern Welsh
§ 80. The above are the changes that have taken place in vowel sounds. Many of them depend upon accentuation or the influence of neighbouring sounds; hence in the Mn. language a vowel may have its original sound in one form of a word, and a changed sound in another, or two different changes of an original vowel may appear in two different forms of a word. ”

“ The vowel sounds i, e, a, o, w, except in certain diphthongal combinations, have probably undergone no material change from the O. W. period to the present day; the sounds a, e, o, have always been represented by the characters a, e, o, [2] and the sound i always by i, with some exceptions in Early Ml. W., § 16 ii (2) .
§ 10. The sound of a is that of the English a in father. It occurs long as in tad 'father', medium as in tá|dol 'fatherly', and short as in mam 'mother'.
The sound does not occur short in English, the a of Eng. man being a more forward sound, which may be denoted by æ. ”

“ In Ml. W. and Early Mn. W., initial c is generally written k. The chief exceptions are the combinations cl, cr. Medially we find c, k, cc, ck. Finally after a consonant, though we generally have c, we also find k (or even ck) ; as grafangk, oerdrangk r.p. 1321, diag̃k etc. do. 1314, digelk do. 1364, Iork r.b.b. 397, carbunck, Ỻ.a. 170. In these words the sound was, and is, voiceless. Note that after a vowel, where the sound is now g, it is never written k in Ml. W. Thus k, which represents the tenuis only, is clearly distinguished from c, which also finally represents the media. ”

“ The scanty materials which we possess for the study of Gaulish and British are sufficient to show that these languages preserved the Aryan case-endings, and were at least as highly inflected as, say, Latin. The great change which transformed British and converted it into Welsh and its sister dialects was the loss of the endings of stems and words, by which, for example, the four syllables of the British Maglo-cŭnos were reduced to the two of the Welsh Mael-gwn. ”

“ The common imitation thl conveys the effect of the “hiss” (voiceless spirant) in the th, and gives the side effect in the l. But ll is of course a simple sound, which may be described shortly as a “unilateral hiss”. The sound of rh is the Welsh trilled r made voiceless by a strong emission of breath, causing an audible aspirate glide after it. Briefly, it is r and h sounded together.
viii. Voiced liquids : l; r. The latter is trilled like the strong Scotch r, or the Italian r. The trilled r is a difficult sound to acquire; young children usually substitute l for it. ”

“ The ogam inscriptions are Goidelic, and those written in Roman letters are in bad Latin, while many of the names even in the latter are Goidelic in form. In some cases a name has the Lat. nom. ending ‐us, as Catamanus Rhys no. 6 (LWPh.2 364) , Aliortus no. 14, Veracius g, but most have the Lat. gen. ending ‐i, as Cunogusi hic jacit 5 ‘ [the body] of C. lies here’. The names and the following maqu̯qu̯i of the ogams show that ‐i is gen., and not a debased form of the Brit. nom. ‐os. (The ogam ‐i is the Kelt. gen. suffix *‐ī, being the Italo-Kelt. gen. of ‐o- stems.) As a rule the Lat. ”

“ A dialectal form in S.W. of bynnag is gynnag, and gynnag pwy, gynnag beth are found in some lesser writings of the late period; more recently they appear in the corrupt and curiously meaning­less forms gan nad pwy, gan nad beth.
v. As the interrogative is always predicative it is followed regularly in Ml. and Mn. W. by the relative on the analogy of affirm­ative sentences; thus pwy a ŵyr ‘who [is it] that knows?’ on the analogy of Duw a ŵyr ‘ [it is] God that knows’, § 162 vii (2) . ”

“ In the 1620 Bible we have atcas, datcuddiad, etc.; but the more usual spelling later was atgas, datguddiad, etc., which perhaps represents the sound more accurately. When however the second consonant was a dental it tends more to be voiceless. In the Bible we find such forms as digter for dicter, the g being due to dig. In cynghanedd either consonant may correspond to a tenuis or a media. Pughe’s etymological spellings adgas, udgorn, hebgor, etc., misrepresent the sound, which is as nearly as possible atgas, utgorn, hepgor. ”

“ Forms which survived and developed regularly in the Mn. period are given in Mn. spelling ; thus for Ml. W. deveit see under defaid. Italicized forms include those which became obsolete, or are replaced by re-formations in the Mn. period. But some forms, such as UaSoS, are italicized because quoted from Ml. texts, so that italics do not necessarily imply that a form is not Mn.
For pi. nouns not included, see the sg. ; for the spv. of adjectives see the pos. or cpv. ; for verbal forms see the ist sg. pres. ind. or the v.n. In cases of irregular flexion all stems are represented in the index. ”

“ Zimmer ignores the difference of meaning between the eqtv. and an abstract noun; er fy nhlodi is ‘in spite of my poverty’, but er fy nhloted is ‘in spite of the degree of my poverty’; the former means ‘though I am poor’, the latter ‘however poor I may be’; the idea of ‘degree’ is common to the W. eqtv. and Bret. exclamative, and it is absurd to assert, as Zimmer does, that it is a meaning read into the form by us moderns.
Some of the irregular equatives given in the next section begin with cỿm‐, cỿn‐, cỿf‐, cỿ‐, which are the regular forms of Kelt. ”

“ Long diphthongs must represent radical disyllables, and their reduced grades can only be explained from the disyllabic forms. Thus ēi̯ must be FV of *eə̯ei̯ or *eə̯ai̯ (ei/ai v (2) ) ; the R of the first syll. is ə which vanishes before a vowel, leaving ei or ai (properly VF of *eə̯ei̯ or *eə̯ai̯) ; if the second is reduced we get ii̯, before a cons. i (properly VR of *eə̯ei̯ or *eə̯ai̯) . We know that ēi̯ interchanges in roots with ei̯ē or ei̯ā; this implies a metathesis of the sonants, for the latter forms represent *ei̯eə̯ or *ei̯aə̯; the RR of these is *ii̯ə which gives ī, see vii (2) . ”

“ Unaccented syllables here include those bearing a secondary accent, in which the vowel is also short, as in cĕ̀nedláethau, though before a vowel it may be long in deliberate pronunciation, as in dḕalltẃri̯aeth.
In Late Ml. W. the same rule probably held good, but not necessarily earlier. In O. W. it was clearly possible to distinguish in the unaccented penult the quantities preserved later when the syllable became accented, § 56 iv.
§ 50. Vowels in accented syllables in Mn. W. are either (1) long, as the a in cân ‘song’; (2) medium as the a in canu ”

“ The pres. ind. of the verb ‘to be’ has a relatival form sydd, sy, Ml. W. yssyẟ, yssy, in the b.b. often issi (i ≡ y) . The full form ysydd is also used in Mn. W., and is generally wrongly divided y sydd, because the accent is on the second syllable. The suffixed rel. is the subject of the verb, which always means ‘who is’, ‘who am’, etc.
Although originally 3rd sg., the rel. may have a noun or pron. of any number or person as ante­cedent; thus Diau mat chwychwi sy bobl Job xii 2 ‘Doubtless it is you who are people’. ”