> Basically, yes. However, one or two points strike me as odd. > Hwy has long since passed from most registers of Welsh, it is still used in lit > erary texts and in super-formal texts. What puzzles the non-Welshman about this sort of comment is that although it seems to imply that 'literary' (never mind 'super-formal') refers to some extremely exalted stratum of usage -- i.e. something other than 'most registers' of the language -- one finds in practice that the forms thus described (?stigmatised) seem to occur in almost any sort of writing that doesn't set out to imitate spoken usage. Is writing "hwy" for "nhw" really that much more formal than writing, say, "I do not" for "I don't"? The fact that literacy in Welsh is less widespread among its speakers than literacy in English means that the literary forms of Welsh, where they differ from the corresponding colloquial forms, are going to be used less often and by fewer people. But does that make them super-formal, or just rarer? > My understanding of Hwynt is that it is used in the form 'Hwynt hwy', > which is basically an extremely long winded way of saying 'nhw' or, as we tend > to say in the south 'nw' - mae nhw would become ma+ nw Surely hwynthwy is to hwy as y nhw is to nhw -- i.e. it's the stressed or emphatic form. (Long-winded if you like, but long- windedness is often 'iconic' of emphasis.) ************************ Nigel Love Linguistics Cape Town NLOVE@BEATTIE.UCT.AC.ZA ************************