The morphology of the Welsh language has many characteristics not found in English or in European languages such as French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, and Cornish. Welsh is a moderately inflected language. Verbs inflect for person, number, tense, and mood, with affirmative, interrogative, and negative conjugations of some verbs. There is no case inflection in Modern Welsh, the last vestige of which may only be found in the soft mutation found in vocative use, itself sporadic and unreliable in the spoken language.
Modern Welsh can be written and spoken in several levels of formality, for example colloquial or literary,: "A distinction must first be made between the Colloquial (or Spoken) Welsh in this grammar and Literary Welsh. The difference between these two is much greater than between the virtually identical colloquial and literary forms of English - so great, in fact, that there are good grounds for regarding them as separate languages."For a complete treatment of literary Welsh, see A Grammar of Welsh (1980) by Stephen J. Williams as well as different dialects. The grammar described in this article is for Colloquial Welsh, which is used for speech and informal writing. Literary Welsh is closer to the form of Welsh used in William Morgan's 1588 translation of the Bible and can be seen in formal writing. It does not reflect the spoken language presented here.
Initial consonant mutation
Initial consonant mutation is a phenomenon common to all Insular Celtic languages, although there is no evidence of it in the ancient Continental Celtic languages of the first millennium AD; nor was there any evidence of this in the Insular Celtic languages around the 500s.
The first consonant of a word may change when preceded by certain words (e.g. prepositions, articles, determiners, and conjunctions), or because of some other grammatical context (such as when the grammatical object follows a conjugated verb). Mutations are also frequently used to indicate the gender of a mutable noun. As well as at the beginning of words, mutations are also regularly found at the beginning of the second element of compound words.
Welsh has three mutation grades: the soft mutation (), the nasal mutation (), and the aspirate mutation (; also called spirant mutation in some grammars). There is a fourth mutation, the mixed mutation which combines the aspirate/spirant mutation with the soft mutation. These are also represented in the orthography:
Radical Soft Nasal Aspirate English p b mh ph children t d nh th town house c g ngh ch tree b f m brother d dd n water g ∅ ng work blue station m f big ll l parish rh r something ts j chips
A blank cell indicates no change.
The mutation reflects a change heard in modern words borrowed from English. Borrowed words like (chips) can often be heard in Wales and the mutated form is also common. (I'm going to get chips); (I have chips). Despite this the "ts" → "j" mutation is not usually included in the classic list of Welsh mutations and is rarely taught in formal classes. Nevertheless, it is a part of the colloquial language and is used by native, first-language speakers. As well as soft mutation of it has also been reported that some speakers display the nasal mutation of .
The word for "stone" is , but "the stone" is (soft mutation), "my stone" is (nasal mutation) and "her stone" is (aspirate mutation). These examples represent usage in the standard language; there is some regional and idiolectal variation in colloquial usage. In particular, the soft mutation is often used where nasal or aspirate mutation might be expected on the basis of these examples.
Mutation is not triggered by the form of the preceding word; the meaning and grammatical function of the word are also relevant. For example, while meaning "in" triggers nasal mutation, homonyms of do not. For example: In the sentence ("There is plastic in Siaco's nose") has undergone nasal mutation. In the sentence ("Siaco's nose is plastic") has undergone soft mutation, not nasal mutation. In the sentence ("Siaco's nose contains plastic") is not mutated.
Soft mutation
The soft mutation () is by far the most common mutation in Welsh. When words undergo soft mutation, the general pattern is that unvoiced plosives become voiced plosives, and voiced plosives become fricatives or disappear; some fricatives also change, and the full list is shown in the above table.
In some cases a limited soft mutation takes place. This differs from the full soft mutation in that words beginning with and do not mutate.
Common situations where the limited soft mutation occurs include:
Feminine singular nouns after the definite article (), e.g. 'the war', not *; 'the stage', not *. Feminine nouns following the numeral (one), e.g. 'one war', not *; 'one windpipe', not *. Nouns or adjectives used predicatively or adverbially after . Adjectives following ("so"), ("too") or ("fairly, very").
Common situations where the full soft mutation occurs are as follows – this list is by no means exhaustive:
Qualifiers (adjectives, nouns, or verb-nouns) used to qualify feminine singular nouns, e.g. 'a big cat' [< ]; 'a singing girl' [< ]. Words immediately following the prepositions ("for"), ("on"), ("to"), ("under"), ("over"), ("through"), ("without"), ("until"), ("by"), ("by, near, beside, with"), ("to"), ("of, from") Nouns following the number two ( / ) Nouns following adjectives (N.B. most adjectives follow the noun); i.e. 'old man' (from 'man'). Nouns after the possessive adjectives (informal/singular 'your') and ('his'). An object of a conjugated verb. The second element in many compound words, i.e. from ('parish') + ('Mary'). Verb-nouns following an indirect object, i.e. ('I must go'). Inflected verbs in the interrogative and negative (also frequently, in the spoken language, the affirmative), though this should strictly be the "mixed mutation".
The occurrence of the soft mutation often obscures the origin of placenames to non-Welsh-speaking visitors. For example, is the church of (Mary), and is the bridge on the Tawe ( + ).
Nasal mutation The nasal mutation (Welsh: ) normally occurs:
after – generally pronounced as if spelt – ("my"), e.g. ("a bed"), ("my bed"), pronounced after the locative preposition ("in"), e.g. ("Tywyn"), ("in Tywyn") after the negating prefix ("un-"), e.g. ("fair"), ("unfair").
Notes The preposition becomes if the following noun (mutated or not) begins with m, and becomes if the following noun begins with ng, e.g. ("Bangor"), ("in Bangor"); ("Cardiff"), ("in Cardiff"). In words beginning with , the n is dropped before the mutated consonant (except if the resultant mutation allows for a double n), e.g. + → (although it would be retained before a non-mutating consonant, e.g. + → ). In some dialects the soft mutation is often substituted after giving forms like for "in Cardiff", or it is even lost altogether, especially with place names, giving . This would be considered incorrect in formal registers.
Under nasal mutation, voiced stop consonants become nasals, and unvoiced stops become voiceless nasals. A non-standard mutation also occurs in some parts of North Wales where nasal consonants are also unvoiced, e.g. ("my mother"; standard: ). This may also occur (unlike the ordinary nasal mutation) after ("her"): e.g. ("her grandmother", standard ).
Aspirate mutation The name aspirate mutation can be misleading as the affected consonants do not become aspirated, but become fricatives. This is represented by the addition of an h after the original initial consonant (c , p , t → ch , ph , th ), but the resultant forms are pronounced as single phonemes.
The aspirate mutation occurs: after the possessive when it means "her" – 'her dog' (< 'dog') after ("and") – 'coffee and cake' (< 'cake') after ("with", "by means of") – 'cut with a knife' (< 'knife') after ("with") – 'cake with coffee' (< coffi 'coffee') for nouns after the masculine numeral three () – 'three fish(es)' (< 'fish') after the number six (, written before a noun as ) – 'six children' (< 'child') Aspirate mutation is the least-used mutation in colloquial Welsh. The only word that it always follows in everyday language is ("her") and it is also found in set phrases, e.g. ("more than likely"). Its occurrence is unusual in the colloquial Southern phrase ("that's why") as causes the soft mutation, not aspirate mutation. Colloquially, the aspirate mutation is often replaced by the soft mutation, or ignored altogether – particularly mutation of t- and p-; one is likely to hear , and for 'don't worry'.
Mixed mutation
A mixed mutation occurs when negating conjugated verbs. Initial consonants undergo aspirate mutation if subject to it, and soft mutation if not. For example, ("I heard") and ("I said") are negated as ("I heard nothing") and ("I said nothing"). In practice, soft mutation is often used even when aspirate mutation would be possible (e.g. ); this reflects the fact that aspirate mutation is in general infrequent in the colloquial language (see above).
h-Prothesis Under some circumstances an h is added to the beginning of words that begin with vowels, a process commonly called "h-prothesis" and usually called pre-vocalic aspiration (PVA) by linguists. This occurs after the possessive pronouns ("her"), ("our") and ("their"), e.g. ("age"), ("her age"). It also occurs with ("twenty") after ("on") in the traditional vigesimal counting system, e.g. ("twenty-one", literally "one on twenty").
Although aspirate mutation also involves the addition of h in spelling, the environments for aspirate mutation and initial h addition do not overlap except for ("her").
The article Indefinite article Welsh has no indefinite article. This means that indefiniteness is implied by the lack of definite article or determiner. The noun cath, therefore, means both 'cat' and 'a cat'.
English has no plural indefinite article proper, but often uses the word "some" in place of one: compare "I have an apple" and "I have some apples", where the word "some" is being used as an article because the English language calls for something in this position, compare "I have apples" and "I have some apples". In these types of English sentences, the word "some" is therefore left untranslated due to there being no concept of an indefinite article in Welsh: mae gen i afalau ('I have [some] apples').
Definite article
The definite article, which precedes the words it modifies and whose usage differs little from that of English, has the forms , and . The rules governing their usage are:
When the previous word ends in a vowel, regardless of the quality of the word following, is used, e.g. ("the cat is outside"). This rule takes precedence over the other two. When the following word (usually a noun) begins with a vowel or h, is used, e.g. ("the garden"), ("the sun"). "w" counts as a vowel in words such as ("the face"), ("the week"); similarly "i" in ("the language"). (But sometimes is heard before and .) In all other places, is used, e.g. ("the boy"). "w" counts as a consonant in words such as ("the country"), ("the web").
The article triggers the soft mutation when it is used with feminine singular nouns, e.g. "(a) princess" but ("the princess").
The definite article is used in Welsh where it would not be used in English in the following ways:
To prevent a noun from being indefinite. In an English sentence like I'm going to school, the noun school has no article, but the listener is expected to know which school is being talked about. In Welsh this noun (ysgol) would take the definite article: dw i'n mynd i'r ysgol ('I'm going to school'). With demonstratives like this and that, which in Welsh are phrases equivalent to English the... here (this) and the... there (that), e.g. y bore 'ma (this morning); y gadair 'na (that chair).