.... > Now there's presumably a similar tendency for > something like, say 'yn cymryd' ("accepting") actually to be > pronounced 'yng cymryd'. This isn't a camdreigliad -- yet -- because > you haven't gone all the way to 'yng nghymryd', but I was wondering > whether people conscious of these things take special care not to say > 'yng cymryd' (and not saying that is quite difficult, actually), > because if you do you're half way to making a grammatical mistake. > After all, it must have required a certain level of consciousness of > how you're pronouncing these things for the system whereby yn + c > stays as yn c in some grammatical contexts, but in others goes to yng > ngh, to have come about in the first place; and what I'm interested > in is what measures, if any, you take to stop the whole process > starting up again in contexts (e.g. in 'yn cymryd') where the grammar > forbids it. It's an odd and interesting thing for a language to make > grammatical capital, so to speak, out of the presence vs the absence > of a natural phonetic assimilation, and I'd like to know to what > extent the system is positively 'managed' by speakers. > > Here's another example to ponder: yn 'nghar i. Would you actually > say it like that, or as "yng nghar i'? > > Nigel Love Dear Nigel, I think you are quite right. I tried to say "yn cymryd" without and mutation, and it is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. While I was taking lessons at Welsh, this is not one of the points which were covered. They did tell us about other pronunciation anomalies like "Fy" , but neglected to tell us about partial or spoken but unwritten mutations. I think this point is important, for if people made a conscious effort to suppress this mutation, surely it would be noticed and passed on to those who are learning? So, I shall assume that there is no effort to eradicate this error. I studied some middle Welsh (Buched Dewi it was) and noticed that many mutations were not written,and most of them only written some of the time. Thus, I assume that in the past,it was decided that these verbs would not mutate, and the standardisation of spelling and grammar has made this last perhaps longer than it would have ordinarily. As far as I have been able to tell from *very* limited reading, written changes always come after, often a long time after, spoken changes which eventually mirror the spoken language. A good example is the treatment of those wonderful words with German roots with a "gh" in the middle, like "night, light", and so on. It is becoming increasingly popular, especially in the media,to spell these phonetically (I almost wrote "wrong" there which tells you something about how I personally view this subject [corruption] ;> ) viz: "lite," or "nite". Perhaps, in the fulness of time, your above examples will not be seen as grammatical errors so much as spelling mistakes and later, due to common usage, will be considered quite correct in spelling and in grammer. We will be taught that there are two words, "yn" and "yn",which have diff- erent meanings, but no obvious discerning features in use. I wonder if that would make it easier or harder to learn. It would make spelling sim- pler, but grammer is not generally happy when you get the same word,to all intents and purposes but with different meanings depending where it is placed. But no, what about "iawn" for a good example of that? Enough for now... About "Yn 'nghar"; one would write "yn fy nghar" and would give "yn" as the pronunciation of both "yn" and "fy",but that the "fy" mutates, so this problem does not seem to arise here. Yn Yngh nghar" is what I say and the two nasally bits are pronounced as only on so: "yn 'nghar with a little emphasis on the "'n"?? The first "yn" is, at any rate,seperate from the other two words enen if they elide into one. The "fy" is lost, and is often missed out in written Welsh: the mutation tells us that it is there, and the "yn" is retained but causes no mutation as it comes before an "F". Anyhow, all the best, do write back on this as there quite likely to be a few errors in the above.Thanks for writing back in the first place and all the best, Jason. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jason I Mirza, Dysgwr o Lanbedr Pont Steffan, pj041@lampeter.ac.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------------------