Copyright © 2003, 2004 all rights reserved. This page most recently revised on: May 31, 2004
This is the last mutation you will have to learn. (That is, the last type of mutation. There are still a lot of causes of mutation yet to be learned.)
This is also the rarest mutation. It occurs after the preposition yn(meaning "in"), after the first person singular possessive pronoun vy (meaning "my"), and after a couple of numbers (which we'll deal with in a separate section on numbers). That's it.
Note: the preposition yn is a different word than the predicative particle yn and causes a different mutation.
The nasal mutation affects six letters.
Radical | Root word | Gloss | Mutation | "My <word>" | Gloss |
p | penn | head | mh | vy mhenn | my head |
b | brawd | brother | m | vy mrawd | my brother |
t | tad | father | nh | vy nhad | my father |
d | Duw | God | n | vy Nuw | my God |
c | cath | cat | ngh | vy nghath | my cat |
g | gwlad | country | ng | vy ngwlad | my country |
When you chart them out, the mutations make a useful pattern for remembering them. Three letters take the aspirate mutation. They are p, t, c -- what are called in phonetics "voiceless stops". These and their "voiced" counterparts (b, d, g) take the nasal mutation. And all the preceding plus m, ll (and in Modern Welsh, rh) take lenition (except that ll doesn't take _all_ the lenitions). The basic letter is called the "radical".
Radical
|
Lenited
|
Nasalized
|
Aspirated
|
p
|
b
|
mh
|
ph
|
t
|
d
|
nh
|
th
|
c
|
g
|
ngh
|
ch
|
b
|
v
|
m
|
|
d
|
dd
|
n
|
|
g
|
-
|
ng
|
|
m
|
v
|
||
ll
|
l
|
Using your existing vocabulary, make phrases of the form "my X" with the proper mutations.