Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr: text and comments

[megli]

Oh - I was taking 'mi' to be a preverbial particle as in modern Welsh 'Mi welais jac-y-do' rather than the pronoun. I suppose with 'Mi welais' or plain 'Gwelais' where the the pronoun is part of the inflected form of the verb it's difficult to say whether the verb or the subject comes first! (though in speech the pronoun is often added after the verb (Mi welais i ...). I suppose I should have been alerted by the particle 'a' that this was not the case.

Mac Cana thinks that fe and mi as preverbal meaningless particles are the relics of abnormal order patterns - they can no longer be considered pronouns as in a sentence like

mi ei di i'r siop nawr!
'You'll go to the shop now!'

The mi (originally the 1st person pronoun) and the person of the verb don't agree.

It must have arisen when a sentence like
mi a af i'r dre (abnormal order, 'I will go to the town')
became:

mi af i'r dre (with the loss of the particle a as often happens when it is the relative, e.g. y gwr (a) ffoniodd ddoe, 'the man who phoned yesterday)

and eventually the mi lost its semantic power and was felt to be merely a positive marker, indicating that the sentence was a positive statement, not a negative or a question. Then it could be used with other persons:

mi oedd steffan yma, 'Steffan was here'.

Ditto 'fe'.

[Heron]

Yes I see. Diolch


Isn't language wonderful!

[Rion]

I hate to sound like a massive language geek, but this is wonderful! Megli, you explain everything so clearly, you make Middle Welsh make more sense than Modern.

*wanders off to the library to see if Israelis care about Middle Welsh Grammar*

[megli]

In some ways I think it's easier than Modern welsh, actually.

[Heron]

Yes, once you get used to it (well the prose, anyway)

[Rion]

Turns out they don't (care, I mean), so this will have to wait until I have enough money to order books. Looking forward to it

[megli]

Yes, the poetry is often dreadfully difficult. but the prose is fine, usually, as these things go. Anything is easier than Old irish!

Let me know when and if you get the books and we cd start this up again. I've rather lost the thread of it though.

[Deleted]

I cannot express how much I would love to tackle this. Given however that I've been off and on with trying to learn modern Welsh for so long without raging success I'm a little dubious about my language capabilities. In the mean time I wonder which of the English translations of the Mabinogion you consider superior?

[megli]

Well, I'm happy to do it for one person but it needs a bit of committment as well as the two books---the text and the grammar. (Best ordered from the Dublin Insitute for Advanced Studies).

Your language skills will be fine, I'm sure.

I think Sioned Davies' translation is the best though I like Jones & Jones as well.

[Deleted]

Thank you very much. I'm very tempted. I shall have to give it and my schedule some thought and look into when I could afford the books. I really want to do it, I've always really wanted to do it. I just don't want to waste your generously provided time so I'll make sure I can really commit to it before saying yes for sure. I shall have to get back into practicing my modern Welsh I find the reading side of it always improves by my speaking has always been the difficulty as I haven't anyone around who speaks it to speak and listen to. Thanks again.

[dumnorix]

Hello
I think that building on what you've taught here megli I am now in a position to teach myself with the help of translation, grammar and dictionary. I just needed a starting-point, and this sub-forum has provided a brilliant one. A big thumbs up!

[megli]

Glad it helped.