Handouts for the course

[megli]

This is the first of four preliminary 'handouts', which give the information and terminology necessary before we can start reading the actual text.

Caer Feddwyd Branwen Reading Class 1


This file includes three sections. They are:

the Parts of Speech,
an explanation of the terms subject, object and complement,
and a discussion of the Middle Welsh verb.

Like all specialised activities, talking about languages with precision requires the use of unusual terms which must be deployed exactly. Please learn any unfamiliar words – they are absolutely essential to what follows, and if you are not sure of precisely what they mean, please please ask!




THE PARTS OF SPEECH


All words in the Middle Welsh language fall into one of the following categories.


Noun: a ‘thing-word’: hat, egg, Dover, Mary, swarm, budgie, honour

The names of people and places (Dover, Mary) are referred to as ‘proper’ nouns.

Pronoun: a word which stands in for a noun:
he, she, it, they, that one, this one, you, us, him, we, who, which


Verb: a ‘doing-word’: run, shout, dance, kill, weep, consider, go

Adjective: a describing word, which adds a new bit of information about a noun: brown, tall, dirty, good, late

Adverb: a describing word, which adds a new bit of information about a verb, often when, where or in what manner it took place:

slowly, quickly, soon, yesterday, thence, secretly, upwards, over there, scarcely

Conjunction: a ‘joining-word’ that connects two parts of a sentence:
and, or, either, but, if, until, so that, also

Preposition: a little word denoting position in time or space:
on, under, through, in, over, behind, for, within, along with

Exclamation: a stand-alone shouting-out word:
Ow! Oh! Oh dear! Haha! Ah! Ouch!

Definite article: the
Welsh has no indefinite article, that is, no word corresponding to English a, an.

And a further one, the so-called 'particle':

We don’t have particles in English. Particles are unchanging little words, always of one syllable and often of only one letter, which help to signpost the grammar of the sentence and often have no intrinsic meaning of their own.


It is absolutely necessary that you know these terms by heart.





A VITAL PIECE OF GRAMMATICAL JARGON: 'SUBJECT', 'OBJECT', 'COMPLEMENT'

When discussing how the grammar of a particular sentence works, we will constantly be using the terms subject, object and complement.

The subject is whatever is performing the action indicated by the verb. In the following sentences, the subject is in bold.

He is running.
David was late.
The huge duck has killed the children.
The snow has gone.
She was here a minute ago.


The object is whatever is on the receiving end of the action indicated by the verb. In the following sentences, the object is in bold:

I killed him.
The duck pecked the children to death.
He broke the spear.
Mary boiled the pork.
They have built a house.

In the phrase 'David killed Goliath', David is the subject, and Goliath is the object.

I hope this is clear...!



But be aware: the verb ‘to be’ cannot have an object.

Compare:

‘I killed the king’ (subject verb object)

and

‘I am the king’

In the second sentence, ‘the king’ and the ‘I’ are one and the same person! We therefore call ‘the king’ in the second sentence the complement, not the object.




DESCRIBING THE VERB


You need to be familiar with the terminology we use to specify bits of the Middle Welsh verb. Middle Welsh, like French, is an inflected language. In other words, it uses endings attached to a verbal stem to convey -

a)

what time period the action takes place in (now, in the future, continuously in the past, or as a one-off event in the past?)

b)

who is doing the action (is it me? You? He, she or it? Us? Them?)

c)

and finally whether the action is definite or merely potential.


The Middle Welsh verb has four basic time periods. We call these time periods tenses.

These are: the present, the imperfect, the preterite and the pluperfect.

The present describes an action that is currently happening: ‘He runs’, ‘you are selling’, ‘they are wailing’.

The imperfect refers to an action that was ongoing in the past, usually expressed with English ‘was’ or ‘were’: ‘He was running’, ‘you were selling’, ‘they were wailing’.

The preterite refers to a single, snappy one-off action in the past, often expressed with ‘–ed’ in English: ‘he ran’, ‘you sold’, ‘they wailed’.

The pluperfect refers to an action in the past that occurred before another event which was also in the past, and always corresponds to English ‘had’: ‘he had run’, ‘you had sold’, ‘they had wailed, [when suddenly something else happened…]’.


You may be wondering where the future is. In MW, there isn’t one. The present is used for the future, and you have to tell by the context which is meant. (We do this in English too – ‘I’m running the marathon next week’ is an example of a present tense verb (‘I am’), used with future meaning.


* * *

Each individual tense (or time period) has six unique parts, which tell you WHO is performing the action, in other words, who the subject is. We call these six parts the 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons singular, and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons plural. Below are their meanings.

Singular 1st 'I' 2nd 'you' (one person) 3rd 'he/she/it'

Plural 1st 'we' 2nd 'you' (more than one person) 3rd 'they'

This table lets us specify a form of the verb with absolute precision. Here is an example of a real MW tense: this is the verb caru, ‘to love’, in the present tense, with translations:

Singular 1st caraf ‘I love, I am loving’ 2nd kery ‘you love, you are loving' 3rd car ‘he, she or it loves, is loving’

Plural 1st carwn 'we love, we are loving' 2nd kerwch 'you (more than one person) love, you are loving' 3rd carant 'they love, they are loving'

These could all also be translated as future, ‘I will love’, etc.

To specify a particular form, we say ‘this is the 3rd person singular present tense of caru.’ This information would allow another person to go off and find the exact same form, namely, car.


* * *

So now we understand the terminology of person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd, singular and plural) and tense. But I also mentioned that the MW verb encodes whether the action is definite (real) or potential (unreal, or hoped for). This quality is called mood.

Mood is conveyed by a second set of forms (also inflected for tense and person) which convey unreal or potential action. The ‘reality’ endings, discussed above, make up one set of forms called the ‘indicative mood’, and the ‘unreality endings’ make up a set of forms called ‘the subjunctive mood’. The subjunctive is translated with words like ‘may’ and ‘might’: ‘he may run’, ‘you may sell’, ‘he may wail’, or as wishes: ‘would that he would run!’, ‘if only she would sell!’, ‘would that he would wail!’

The Welsh subjunctive mood is limited, however: it has only a present and an imperfect tense, in contrast to the four tenses of the indicative mood.


So what we have is as follows, namely six sets of six forms for each verb:


Indicative mood:

Present/Future tense: singular plural 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd

Imperfect tense: singular plural 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd

Preterite tense: singular plural 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd

Pluperfect tense: singular plural 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd

Subjunctive mood:

Present tense: singular plural 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd

Imperfect tense: singular plural 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd

There is in fact a third mood, the imperative, which is used for direct commands: ‘Run!, ‘Sell!’ ‘Wail!’.

It has only one tense, the present, and is missing the 1st person singular because you can’t order yourself to do something (in Welsh, at least). The 3rd persons are best translated with ‘let…’, as in ‘Let him run!’ ‘Let them seek!’, and the 2nd persons with the bald English imperatives, ‘run!’, ‘seek!’, and so on.

So -

Imperative Mood

'Present tense' (but no real tense, not really) singular plural - 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd

[megli]

This is the second installment of 4 preliminary grammatical handouts.

Caer Feddwyd Branwen Reading Class 2

This second file introduces the pronunciation of the language and its orthography, that is, how the sounds relate to the spelling.


Modern Welsh has a very consistent spelling system, so that if I encounter a word I have never seen before, I can still pronounce it accurately by following the rules. English is not so kind to the learner: think of cough, bough, through, which all end in –ough, but are pronounced three different ways.


Middle Welsh is rather in-between, and there is a certain amount of variation between and even within texts. The neat, clean system of Modern Welsh spelling was not yet up-and-running in the year 1100.


The vowels

A: either short ‘a’ as in ‘hat’, or, in some words, long ‘ah’ as in ‘father’

E: either short ‘e’ as in ‘pet’, or, in some words, long ‘eh’ as in ‘pare’

I: either short ‘i’ as in ‘pit’ or, in some words, long ‘ee’ as in ‘feet’

O: either short ‘o’ as in ‘pot’, or, in some words, long ‘oh’ as in ‘own’

U: as a vowel, it is THE SAME AS ‘I’ ABOVE! It is NOT like English ‘u’. But ‘u’ – VERY IMPORTANTLY – is also a consonant in Middle Welsh, corresponding to Modern Welsh ‘w’ and often to Modern Welsh ‘f’. See below.

W: ‘oo’ as in ‘look’ when short, ‘ooooh’ as in ‘boon’ when long. Also a consonant (see below.)

Y: in anything except the last or only syllable of a word, ‘uh’ as in the –er of ‘hunter’.

In the last or only syllable of the word, it is the same as ‘I’ above, and, like ‘I’, may be short (‘i’ as in ‘pit’), or long (‘ee’ as in ‘feet’.)

So note carefully that ‘Y’ has three different potential sounds, 'uh', 'i' and 'ee', depending on where it is in the word.



The Diphthongs (combinations of vowels pronounced as a single sound)

AE: like English ‘eye’
AW: like English ‘ow!’
EU: like English ‘eye’
EI: like in English ‘hey’ or sometimes as ‘eye’
EW: eh-oo, run together, not like English ‘dew’
UW: ee-oo, run together, a bit like English ‘dew’
WY: ooh-ee, run together, rather like English ‘gooey’ said quickly
But (G)WY-, as in Gwydion, for example, is usually Gwi-, not Goo-ee.


The consonants

Some consonants (in RED) have a different pronunciation depending on whether they are at the beginning of a word, or in the middle/at the end of it. Note that some consonants are double (Th, Ll, Ph, Ff) and these count as individual consonants in their own right.

B: like English

C: ‘c’ as in ‘cat’, NEVER like the first ‘c’ in English ‘cycle’. Occasionally, at the end of a word, it is ‘g’ as in ‘get’.

Ch: as in Scottish ‘loch’

D: ‘d’ as in ‘dad’ at the start of a word – inside a word, or as the last letter of a word, it is usually the th- sound of English ‘those’. This sound was later written with a double d (dd) in Modern Welsh.

F: usually like English ‘v’ as in ‘van’; very occasionally like English ‘f’ as in ‘fan’, but I will point it out when this occurs.

(Ff): ‘f’ as in English ‘fan’; this letter is rare in Middle Welsh. See PH, below.

G: always ‘g’ as in ‘get’, NEVER like the ‘g’ in ‘gem’

NG: always like ‘ng’ in English ‘singer’, not ‘ng-g’ as in English ‘finger’, except in one word - dangos, ‘to show’, pronounced dang-goss.

H: like English

K: like English

L: like English

Ll: a raspy HL

M: as English

N: as English

P: as English. Occasionally, at the end of a word, it is ‘b’ as in ‘bat’.

PH: as English, like in ‘Physics’

R: strongly rolled. At the start of words, it is usually pronounced hr-.

S, ss: like in English ‘sit’, ‘sister’ or ‘slap’, NEVER ‘z’ like in English ‘closing’.

T: as English, but at the end of a word it is ‘d’ as in ‘dad’.

TH: as English ‘thin’, NOT ‘those’. There is a difference!

U, V: terribly confusing. U is often ‘w’ as in ‘watch’ and equally often ‘v’ as in ‘voice’. One comes to be able to tell the difference with practice and familiarity. It can also be a vowel (see above)!

W: as a consonant, like English. As a vowel, see above.


STRESS

Words are stressed on the second to last syllable.


ACCENTS

The accent marks found in Modern Welsh, such as the circumflex (ˆ), are not used in Middle Welsh.

EXCEPTIONS

There are a small number of oddly pronounced words in Middle Welsh, but , alas, they happen to be amongst the most common in the language. All of them are single-syllable words containing the vowel 'y'.

They are the three words spelled yn, two of which are meaningless particles, and the third of which is the preposition meaning ‘in’. According to the rules we learned above for pronouncing ‘y’, they should both be pronounced ‘in’ or ‘een’. But they aren’t. All three are pronounced as ern, rhyming with English ‘turn’. This oddity must simply be learned.

Further, the definite article (the word meaning 'the') is y before a consonant, and yr before a vowel or word that starts with h-; and it also is pronounced oddly, being much like 'uh' or 'er' in English.

The little words that mean 'my' and 'your' are also oddly pronounced, in much the same way. They are uy (also uyn) and dy, and are pronounced 'vuh' and 'duh', not 'vee' and 'dee'.

[megli]

Here's number 3 of four handouts detailing the grammar needed before we can begin looking at the actual text.

Caer Feddwyd Branwen Reading Class 3


This file introduces the notorious consonant mutations of the Welsh language, and explains how they are expressed in Middle Welsh spelling.


Consonant mutation is a phenomenon common to all six of the modern Celtic languages. The beginning consonant of a word can change, according to certain rules, under particular grammatical circumstances.

In Modern Welsh, for example, the word cath, ‘a cat’, can appear as cath, gath, chath, or nghath, depending on what job it is doing in the sentence.

This looks hopelessly confusing, but in fact is reasonably straightforward to cope with in practice.

Modern Welsh represents all these possible changes very accurately in its spelling. Unfortunately, the spelling system of Middle Welsh only displays about half of them, so sometimes you just have to know that a mutation is at work even though you can’t see it.



There are three types of mutation.

We call them:

‘Soft mutation’ or LENITION (‘softening’)

‘Nasal mutation’ or NASALISATION

‘Aspirate mutation’ or ASPIRATION


Lenition is the most common, and you will see it every few words in a Middle Welsh text. The other two you will see probably once in every line. It is VITAL to understand them clearly.



Below is a table of mutations. Only the ones in black type are reflected in Middle Welsh spelling. The others, in blue, both occur and are pronounced, but are not usually reflected in the spelling, which stays as the (superficially) unmutated consonant.


Note that C and K are mere variations of the same letter in Middle Welsh; K is usually written before the vowels y and e, and C before the vowels o, a and u, by convention.

The letters down the left hand side are the original, starting letters.

Lenition c/k --> g p --> b t --> d b --> u (= English ‘v’!) d --> d (= th- as in ‘those’) g --> vanishes! m --> u (=English ‘v’!) ll --> l Other letters do not change.

As you can see, lenition is always marked in the spelling except for ‘d’, which is pronounced when lenited like the th- in ‘those’, but is not written any differently.

Aspiration is marked very clearly, but only affects three letters, c, p and t.

Aspiration c --> ch p --> ph/ff t --> th

Nasalisation is often completely unmarked in the spelling. (There is some variation in practice.)

Nasalisation b --> m c --> ngh d --> n (intermittently) g --> ng p --> mh t --> nh

You will note that both b and m, when lenited, turn into u-, pronounced like English v. That means that if you see a word like

uarch

You don’t know whether it comes from march or barch. (No words actually begin inherently with u-).

I have chosen ‘Branwen’ as our text because the dictionary at the back of the edition – which gives every word in the tale – gives you the words in the form in which they actually occur in the text, so that if you look up uarch, it will say ‘see march, ‘horse’.’

This makes it hugely easier for beginners to get to grips with the mutations and learn the basic vocabulary.



THE TRIGGERS OF MUTATION

A word mutates because of the word immediately preceding it (which we describe as habitually ‘triggering’ a mutation) or because of its grammatical role. (It is common for the subject to be mutated, for example. Go back to lesson one if you aren’t secure on what a subject is.)

There are between forty and fifty things that trigger lenition in Middle Welsh, which is by far the commonest of the three mutations. (Almost all prepositions cause lenition for example.) The other two, nasalisation and aspiration, are much more limited in scope.

A full list will have to wait, but here are some very common examples, to show you how mutations work in practice.



As in French, nouns have gender in Welsh. They are either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. Note that this does not always correspond to biological sex: inanimate objects and abstract concepts have gender as much as words like horse, sow, king, boy. Usually a biologically female creature is feminine in grammatical gender, but not quite always.


Now the definite article triggers lenition when it is placed before a feminine singular noun. I will give some examples in English, so that you get the principle; even though English doesn’t have grammatical gender, imagine for the sake of the example that girl, cow, priestess, and mistress are ‘feminine’ nouns.


The + girl --> the irl (because g- disappears entirely)
The + cow --> the gow (because c- changes to g-)
The + priestess --> the briestess (because p- changes to b-)
The + mistress --> the uistress (because m- changes to u-) [pronounced ‘vistress’]




This only happens when a noun happens to be feminine and singular: in the plural the initial letter is unchanged, likewise if it is masculine, either singular or plural.

Now some Welsh examples. The Middle Welsh definite article (the word meaning ‘the’) is y, or yr before vowels or h-. Remember it is one of the few words in Welsh which break the pronunciation rules; it is pronounced like English ‘uh’ or ‘er’.


y + cath --> y gath ‘the cat’
y + merch --> y uerch ‘the girl’ (verch)
y + gwreic --> yr wreic ‘the woman’ (oor-eye-g)
y + mam --> y uam, ‘the mother’ (vam)
y + derwen --> y derwen ‘the oak tree’


With the final example, y derwen would be pronounced ‘er therwen’, with the shift of d- to the th- in ‘those’, but this is not marked in Middle Welsh spelling!

* * *

A second very important trigger is the word which means ‘his, her, their’. This (unfortunately) is also y. Very soon you come to realise that y can be at least six or seven things in Middle Welsh, and being able to work out which y one is looking at is a vital skill when it comes to reading the language accurately.

This y, however, is pronounced according to the rules, as ‘ee’.

When it means ‘his’ it triggers LENITION.

When it means ‘hers’ it triggers ASPIRATION, or, if the word begins with a vowel, it prefixes a h- to that word.

When it means ‘their’ it causes no mutation.


Take the word penn, ‘head’.

y benn, ‘his head’
y phenn, ‘her head’ (they might also write y ffenn.)
y penneu, ‘their heads’


With the word cath, ‘cat’:

y gath, ‘his cat’
y chath, ‘her cat’
y cath, ‘their cat’


You will see immediately that y gath is ambiguous, as the y is indistinguishable from the definite article, which would also lenite cath. So y gath is either ‘his cat’ or ‘the cat’, and one must choose which makes better sense. Here, be guided in the first instance by your preferred translation of 'Branwen'.

Of course, as several letters do not undergo mutation, a large number of words are ambiguous. For example, y santes could mean the female saint, his female saint, her female saint or their female saint.

Later we will see that writers and speakers of Middle Welsh came up with various strategies to clear up these ambiguities.

As we go along, it would be a good idea to make a list of words that cause the different mutations, for your own reference.

Incidentally, you can only mutate a word once. So if you have y gath, 'the cat' and that is the subject of the sentence (which often undergoes lenition), you can't lenite y gath again and get **yr ath.


ASTERISKS

One asterisk before a word indicates a reconstructed form.

Two asterisks before a word indicates a mistaken or wrong form, like **yr ath above.

[megli]

Caer Feddwyd Branwen Reading Class 4

This file introduces two vital concepts: the verbal noun and the so-called Abnormal Order.


THE VERBAL NOUN

The Welsh verb, unlike French or English, has no infinitive, that is, no form corresponding to ‘to run’ ‘to speak’ ‘to die’, or French courir, dire, mourir.

Instead, Welsh uses a verbal noun, best translated with English –ing: running, speaking, dying.

You can see that a verbal noun does much the same job as an infinitive in the following example:

I like to run.
I like running.

These two phrases mean exactly the same, but whereas English can use both an infinitive and a verbal noun, Welsh is restricted to the latter.

The verbal noun is the ‘basic’ dictionary form of the verb; we refer to particular verbs using their verbal noun, e.g. ‘the verb caru, 'to love'', ‘the verb mynet, 'to go'’. As you can see from the way I have just translated caru as 'to love' instead of 'loving', we often treat the verbal noun as though it was an infinitive, which strictly speaking, it ain't.

Verbal nouns are hugely important and frequent in Middle Welsh prose.




THE ABNORMAL ORDER

Unfortunately, when translating, we can’t just convert words from Welsh into English and hope that we will get a meaningful sentence thereby. (The John and Caitlin Matthews approach.) Instead, we have to be aware that the arrangement of words in a Middle Welsh sentence follows precise rules, and we can only translate by understanding those rules.

The constituent elements of a positive sentence (i.e. not a negative and not a question) have to be arranged in a particular order. There are several possibilities, but the most common by a huge margin is called ‘the Abnormal Order’.

This is a very unfortunate name, as the Abnormal Order is in fact the most normal thing in the world in Middle Welsh. One just has to accept the rubbish terminology.

It comes in two equally common varieties. The boxes below represent the order in which sentence elements are arranged.

1)

The Subject OR ----------------- + a meaningless particle a ---- + The VERB The Object

The meaningless particle a triggers LENITION.


2)

An adverb (e.g. slowly) A prepositional phrase (e.g. in the wood) ------------ + a meaningless particle y/yd ------- + The VERB A time-phrase (e.g. the next day)

The meaningless particle y or yd (yet another sodding bloody y!) does not cause any mutation. It is y before a consonant and yd before a vowel. Note that yd is pronounced like the first syllable of ‘other’ said quickly. (I promise all these pronunciation exceptions will stop soon).


So, almost every sentence in the text we will be using is in the above order, in one of the two varieties described. Here are some English examples; I have used the totally artificial method of applying Welsh mutations to English words in order to get you to notice them. The untranslatable particles a and y/yd are in bold.

‘Gwydion gallops to the court’

could be expressed in Middle Welsh as either -

Gwydion a allops to the court

Or

To the court y gallops Gwydion.

Similarly, ‘Branwen daughter of Llyr taught language to the starling’ could be phrased as:

Branwen, daughter of Llyr, a daught language to the starling (subject first)

Or

Language a daught Branwen daughter of Llyr to the starling (object first)

Or

To the starling y taught Branwen daughter of Llyr language (prepositional phrase first)


It is important to grasp that none of the elements in these sentences are stressed more than the others in the Abnormal Order – the sentences are all neutral in tone, with equal stress on all the sections.

So you will see already that when you have a sentence which, literally translated, reads -

To the starling y taught Branwen daughter of Llyr language

- you should translate ‘Branwen daughter of Llyr taught language to the starling’, which is natural English word order. The particles a and y/yd have no meaning in and of themselves and are not translated. They are like signposts or traffic police, marshalling the words in the sentence.


AN IMPORTANT SUBTYPE OF THE ABNORMAL ORDER

A very frequent subtype of 1) is when a verbal noun comes first in the sentence, as the object of the verb ‘to do/make’.


‘Branwen taught’ could, according to this formulation, be expressed as:

A teaching a did Branwen.

‘Gwydion attacks’ could be expressed as:

An attacking a does Gwydion.

This structure is hugely common.

(Remember that a causes lenition but that lenition of d- doesn't show up in Middle Welsh orthography.)


Middle Welsh also has a 'Normal Order' and a 'Mixed Order'. The first of these is straightforward and not common, and the second is rare (occuring roughly once per Branch of the Mabinogi), so if we meet one I will explain it then.

Now we are ready to begin reading the text!