Questions about Welsh

[Richard W]

No, it is still subjunctive. The terms "present subjunctive" and "past subjunctive" do not mean they actually are present and past tense, but rather are named based on their similarity to the present indicative and past indicative respectively. E.g. the English "present subjunctive" corresponds to the German Konjunktiv I and the English "past subjunctive" corresponds to the German Konjunktiv II, both of which are not actually marked for tense.

You've just added a new complication to the rule of the sequence of tenses!

For those who use 'lest', do you say 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fell during the journey' or 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fall during the journey'? I appreciate that a commoner usages are is 'The package was secured with a seatbelt so that it wouldn't fall during the journey' in which a past tense is used in the second clause. Note that none of these statements imply that the package didn't actually fall.

There are some little documented oddities, though. The conjunctions whether and if with the same sense seem to more readily use the past subjunctive as opposed to past indicative if the past is being used because of the rule of sequence of tenses. For example, 'He asked if she were well' versus 'He asked whether David was a king while Saul was alive'.

All this is getting away from the question of when morphemes that vanish in translation can be said to have meaning.

[Travis B.]

For those who use 'lest', do you say 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fell during the journey' or 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fall during the journey'? I appreciate that a commoner usages are is 'The package was secured with a seatbelt so that it wouldn't fall during the journey' in which a past tense is used in the second clause. Note that none of these statements imply that the package didn't actually fall.

I would definitely say fall; fell is not even grammatical to me there.

There are some little documented oddities, though. The conjunctions whether and if with the same sense seem to more readily use the past subjunctive as opposed to past indicative if the past is being used because of the rule of sequence of tenses. For example, 'He asked if she were well' versus 'He asked whether David was a king while Saul was alive'.

This is probably a result of the past subjunctive being tenseless whereas the past indicative is explicitly past tense, while both can be used in the same place even with sequence of tenses, so hence one may be more likely to use past subjunctive where one would use present indicative were it not for sequence of tenses, while one may be more likely to use past indicative when one wants to explicitly indicate past tense in the same context.

[KathTheDragon]

For those who use 'lest', do you say 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fell during the journey' or 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fall during the journey'? I appreciate that a commoner usages are is 'The package was secured with a seatbelt so that it wouldn't fall during the journey' in which a past tense is used in the second clause. Note that none of these statements imply that the package didn't actually fall.

I would definitely say fall; fell is not even grammatical to me there.

Likewise.

[Zaarin]

For those who use 'lest', do you say 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fell during the journey' or 'The package was secured with a seatbelt lest it fall during the journey'? I appreciate that a commoner usages are is 'The package was secured with a seatbelt so that it wouldn't fall during the journey' in which a past tense is used in the second clause. Note that none of these statements imply that the package didn't actually fall.

I would definitely say fall; fell is not even grammatical to me there.

Likewise.

Same here.

[Yng]

Yn isn't, at least in northern dialects, pronounced differently in its different functions, though it does trigger different mutations. It has a lot of different meanings:

Mae o'n dwp - he is stupid (there's no minimal pair here, and the particle causes soft mutation), marking a nominal/adjectival complement of the copula
Mae hi'n canu'n dda - she sings well (again no minimal pair), 'she sings well', marking an adverbial use of an adjective, with soft mutation
Mae o'n canu - he is singing/sings (there's also no minimal pair here, 'mae o canu' doesn't mean anything and is ungrammatical), marking a verbal compliment of the copula - here it causes no mutation. Interestingly it can be replaced by other normal prepositions which have various aspectual/semantic effects: heb 'without' is 'has not [ever]', am 'for, about' is 'wanting to' (like 'the lady's not for turning' I guess), wedi 'after' is 'has', ar 'on' is 'about to', etc.

In all of these uses (I think), the yn is dropped if the complement is fronted:

canu mae hi - she's singing
twp ydy o - he's stupid

Its other uses are as a colloquial variant of fy ('my') and as a preposition 'in', neither of which can be dropped when fronted and both of which prototypically cause nasal mutation.

[marconatrix]

All of the modern Celtic languages form the equivalent of a present participle by prefixing a (more or less gramaticalised) preposition to the verbal noun (gerund??)

Welsh uses 'yn' [(ə)n] which otherwise means "in" but without the nasal mutation of the preposition 'yn/ym/yng'. So 'yn mynd' "going" might be thought of as meaning "in (the act of) going" etc.

The Gaelics all basically use 'ag' (OI 'oc') which as a preposition means "with/at/by". In Scotland as a normal preposition this has become 'aig' [εk] probably by analogy with the preposition-pronoun combination 'aige' "with him/it". Before verbal nouns the form is 'ag' before vowels and 'a' before consonants, 'ag òl' "drinking", 'a dol' "going" (and exceptionally 'ag radh' "saying"). However the 'a' [ə] is always unstressed and so is generally elided after a vowel in normal modern speech.

Manx is written rather as Scots G. is pronounced, so all that is seen of this 'ag' is a prefixed 'g-' before verbal nouns beginning with a vowel, and the exceptional 'ta mee gra' "I'm speaking" (= SG. 'tha mi ag radh'). Manx writes the preposition as 'ec'.

I'll leave it for others to comment in detail on how this works in the various Irish dialects, but AFAIK it is always written 'ag' although sometimes pronounced [ig].

Cornish and Breton both use their equivalent of Welsh 'wrth' "with, by, at". (cf. the W. idiom 'wrthi yn mynd' "in the act/process of going" etc., literally "at-it in going").

In Cornish the preposition is '(w)orth', which in the present participle construction becomes 'owth' before vowels and 'ow' before consonants, but with voiced stops being devoiced (and probably geminated) as a result of assimilation of the lost [-θ], e.g. 'owth + doz > ow(t) toz' "going".

In Breton the preposition is written 'ouzh' (no 'r') and the participle formed with 'oc'h' [ox] before vowels and 'o' before consonants. Unlike the devoicing (hard mutation) seen in Cornish, in Breton there is a 'mixed mutation' that is in origin a combination of lenition and devoicing ('soft + hard mutations') but naturally with its own pecularities!

As in Cornish the full prepositional form is restored when there is a pronoun object represented by a possessive pronoun before the verbal noun. So for example "seeing him" becomes literally "at his seeing" C. 'orth y welez' B. 'ouzh e welout', (cf. W. 'yn y weld', SG. 'ga fhaicinn' < 'aig a fh...').

These constructions, equivalent to English "he is/was/will be Xing" are very common in Welsh, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx, where there is no inflected future tense distinct from a generalised present*. Only Irish has retained this distinction, but Breton has restored it by re-purposing the inherited future subjunctive (still found in a few set phrases in Welsh e.g. 'cyn bo hir', 'da boch chi') as a simple future. This sort of makes sense as nothing in the future can really be known for certain In Irish and Breton these construction seem to be less common (e.g. they're introduced about chapter 15 in beginners' courses rather than right near the start for the other languages) and rather place emphasis on the on-going action being described. At least that's my impression FWIW.

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* Edit : I should really have said 'non-past'. The exception is the verb 'to be' that is used as an auxiliary allowing distinctions more or less equivalent to English, "I struck, I strike/will-strike (habitually etc.), I was striking, I am striking, I shall be striking, etc. (SG. Bhuail mi, Buailidh mi, Bha mi a' bualadh, Tha mi a' bualadh, Bithidh mi a' bualadh).

[linguoboy]

I'll leave it for others to comment in detail on how this works in the various Irish dialects, but AFAIK it is always written 'ag' although sometimes pronounced [ig].

Even in the CO (the normative standard), it is only written ag when there is no pronominal object. The actual pronunciation is frequently [ə], [g], [ɟ], or [0] since the vowel is elided after a consonant and the consonant is elided before another consonant. E.g. Tá sé ag léamh [ˈt̪ˠɑːˈʃeːˈlʲeː] "He is reading".

Before a pronominal object (as in Brythonic languages expressed with a possessive pronoun), it is innovatively replaced with do although this orthography is only used before 1S mo, 2S do, and 2P bhur. Before 1P ár it reduces to d (i.e. dár) and it has the effect of lengthening 3S/P a (reduced to [ə] when not elided completely) to á.

Dialectal outcomes vary. In Munster, initial d is rarely found (e.g. Táim ad chosaint "I'm protecting you"). In Cois Fhairrge (a Connemara variety), it has but two forms: 1/2S [gə] and, in all other positions, [ɣɑː].

[Jonlang]

Going back to the sentence Mae'r plant yn wedi chwarae yn y parc which means The children were playing in the park, would I be right in assuming that Mae'r plant yn bydd chwarae yn y parc means The children will be playing in the park?

[Richard W]

... would I be right in assuming that Mae'r plant bydd chwarae yn y parc means The children will be playing in the park?

No. It means something like, 'The children will be a play in the park' which is akin to talking of pianos playing men. The Welsh sentence with the English meaning you gave is Bydd y plant yn chwarae yn y parc.

Incidentally, though I may well be wrong as I agree with Google Translate,

Mae'r plant wedi chwarae yn y parc = 'The children have played in the park'.

Roedd y plant yn chwarae yn y parc = 'The children played/were playing in the park'.

I've a feeling the English tenses etc. don't map cleanly into the Welsh ones. Somewhere in the system there should be something like Chwaraeodd y plant yn y parc = 'The children played in the park'; I'm not sure if it's colloquial Welsh, and I have little confidence I have inflected the verb correctly.

There's also the periphrastic preterite, e.g. North Walian
Ddaru'r plant chararae yn y parc = 'The children played in the park.'
though I think I think it's not very likely, given the semantics.

The Welsh verb is complicated. I recommend that you get a proper grammar and look through that, and then ask questions. Of course, you may have to get a friend to check the grammar's examples. I don't know if there's a BBC Welsh nowadays, but my Welsh-speaking (and reading) grandfather told me that in the First World War, the North Walians and South Walians found it easier to talk to one another in English! I can remember one of my fellow students, who was a genuine native Welsh speaker, telling me that the Welsh taught in books was not how they actually spoke.

[linguoboy]

... would I be right in assuming that Mae'r plant bydd chwarae yn y parc means The children will be playing in the park?

Welsh exhibits default VSO word order. This means that most neutral utterances begin with a conjugated verb. Wedi is part of the predicate, but it's not a verb, it's a particle.

Roedd y plant yn chwarae yn y parc = 'The children played/were playing in the park'.

I've a feeling the English tenses etc. don't map cleanly into the Welsh ones. Somewhere in the system there should be something like Chwaraeodd y plant yn y parc = 'The children played in the park'; I'm not sure if it's colloquial Welsh, and I have little confidence I have inflected the verb correctly.

No, that's correct, and it's perfectly colloquial.

There's also the periphrastic preterite, e.g. North Walian
Ddaru'r plant chwarae yn y parc = 'The children played in the park.'
though I think I think it's not very likely, given the semantics.

What semantics?

There's also a periphrastic preterite with gwneud, e.g. Naeth y plant chwarae yn y parc. Supposedly it's common in some dialects, but I haven't come across it much.

The Welsh verb is complicated. I recommend that you get a proper grammar and look through that, and then ask questions.

I highly recommend the works of Gareth King, especially Modern Welsh: a comprehensive grammar. His work is thoroughly descriptive, rooted in actual colloquial usage rather than the mix of archaicisms and lies I see in a lot of other works.

[Richard W]

There's also the periphrastic preterite, e.g. North Walian
Ddaru'r plant chwarae yn y parc = 'The children played in the park.'
though I think I think it's not very likely, given the semantics.

What semantics?

To me, playing in the park seems to be a durative or habitual action, rather than a punctual act. Therefore, I think it's unlikely to show up in a more punctual form, such as the preterite. I suppose it might turn up in a sequence as, "We shopped, had lunch, the children played in the park, and then we came home". However, I get no Google hits for the strings "ddadu'r plant chwarae" or "naeth y plant chwarae", while there are some for "roedd y plant yn chwarae" (and also for some obvious variants on the writing of the auxiliary).

[linguoboy]

To me, playing in the park seems to be a durative or habitual action, rather than a punctual act. Therefore, I think it's unlikely to show up in a more punctual form, such as the preterite. I suppose it might turn up in a sequence as, "We shopped, had lunch, the children played in the park, and then we came home". However, I get no Google hits for the strings "ddadu'r plant chwarae" or "naeth y plant chwarae", while there are some for "roedd y plant yn chwarae" (and also for some obvious variants on the writing of the auxiliary).

Did you not try searching chwaraeodd y plant? (As I said, IME, the inflected preterite is more common than either of the non-progressive periphrastic forms.)

[Richard W]

Did you not try searching chwaraeodd y plant? (As I said, IME, the inflected preterite is more common than either of the non-progressive periphrastic forms.)

No. That turns the distribution on its head.

[marconatrix]

"Chwaraeodd y plant ..." will often have a perfective edge to it. "The children (have) played ...". You're looking back at the event from the present.
If you say "Roedd y plant yn chwarae ..." = 'The Children were playing' or '... played', you're watching the the ongoing action, a sort of mental recording, e.g. "Roedd y plant yn chwarae pan syrthiodd un ohonyn nhw" 'The kids were playing when one of them fell'.

There is or was an inflected imperfect but this has merged with the past subjunctive in the modern language (same as in Scots Gaelic) and is used for habitual action in the past, in statements like, "When I was a kid we all used to play/would play in the street". Even here though the imperfect of 'bod' with 'yn' + verbal noun, feels more natural, "Pan oeddwn i'n blentyn, bydden ni i gyd yn chwarae yn y stryd", literally '... we would all be playing/ we all used to play'.

In general there seems to have been a move away from compact inflected TMA forms towards periphrasic (is that the word?) constructions with 'yn', 'wedi', 'ddaru' etc. The compact forms have a rather literary flavour. Breton has gone broadly in the same direction, but prefers constructions with the verb 'to do' (e.g. 'The kids did play ...' etc.) rather than 'to be' and seem to have modelled its tense semantics to approximate French usage.

[Jonlang]

The Welsh verb is complicated. I recommend that you get a proper grammar and look through that, and then ask questions.

I highly recommend the works of Gareth King, especially Modern Welsh: a comprehensive grammar. His work is thoroughly descriptive, rooted in actual colloquial usage rather than the mix of archaicisms and lies I see in a lot of other works.

I ordered the book last night from Amazon. It's pretty pricey, and alas I ordered it too late for next day delivery so it'll arrive tomorrow, but I can't wait.

EDIT: Reading through the Berfau chapter of the Welsh Grammar BBC Learn Welsh PDFs it gives some example sentences. One is: Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain? It is then explained that this has two possible meanings:

1. Is Bethan shopping in London?
2. Does Bethan shop in London?

Now these are, really, quite different questions. The second is a more general inquiry. So would a Welsh speaker be more specific in actual day-to-day speaking and ask something more like Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain heddiw? to avoid ambiguity?

Apologies if the Welsh spelling is off, I'm having to fight against auto-correct.

[linguoboy]

I highly recommend the works of Gareth King, especially Modern Welsh: a comprehensive grammar. His work is thoroughly descriptive, rooted in actual colloquial usage rather than the mix of archaicisms and lies I see in a lot of other works.

I ordered the book last night from Amazon. It's pretty pricey, and alas I ordered it too late for next day delivery so it'll arrive tomorrow, but I can't wait.

Worth every penny, trust me.

EDIT: Reading through the Berfau chapter of the Welsh Grammar BBC Learn Welsh PDFs it gives some example sentences. One is: Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain? It is then explained that this has two possible meanings:

1. Is Bethan shopping in London?
2. Does Bethan shop in London?

Now these are, really, quite different questions. The second is a more general inquiry. So would a Welsh speaker be more specific in actual day-to-day speaking and ask something more like Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain heddiw? to avoid ambiguity?

That's a bit odd. I'm used to a different kind of ambiguity, one where the future is used with habitual meaning. So Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain? would mean only "Is Bethan shopping in London?" whereas Fydd Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain? could mean either "Will Bethan be shopping in London?" or "Does Bethan shop in London?"

According to an article I found (privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~wss/habituality.doc), though, the present progressive can also be used with habitual meaning. But all the examples they give are qualified with time expressions (e.g. bob wythnos, y boreau). So my feeling is that the default interpretation of an unqualified sentence like Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain? would be progressive.

[Jonlang]

Hopefully the book will expand on what the BBC Learn Welsh PDFs teach, and then some.

This is purely out of curiosity: There is a brand of milk here in North Wales called Calon Wen which I know means White Heart, but why is white wen and not gwyn? I'm guessing that the loss of "g" is soft-mutation, but why does the "y" change to "e"?

And whilst it's mentioned does anyone know why the soft-mutation is soft? The aspirate and nasal mutations are pretty self-explanatory but seeing as there is no "hard" mutation to compare it with it doesn't appear to be obvious.

[linguoboy]

This is purely out of curiosity: There is a brand of milk here in North Wales called Calon Wen which I know means White Heart, but why is white wen and not gwyn? I'm guessing that the loss of "g" is soft-mutation, but why does the "y" change to "e"?

The short answer is that there is a subclass of adjectives in Welsh which show gender agreement by means of vowel alternations. Other examples of y for masculines vs e for feminines include byr/ber and cryf/cref. The grammar that's winging its way to you will have a fairly comprehensive list of these.

The long answer involves a kind of historical metaphony called "a-umlaut", "a-mutation", or "a-affection".

And whilst it's mentioned does anyone know why the soft-mutation is soft? The aspirate and nasal mutations are pretty self-explanatory but seeing as there is no "hard" mutation to compare it with it doesn't appear to be obvious.

"Soft mutation" (treiglad meddal) is just an impressionist term for what linguists call "lenition". It has the effect of voicing unvoiced segments and spirantising stops. Perceptually, these are "softer" sounds (i.e. requiring less articulatory effort to produce and less differentiated from neighbourhing vowel segments), so it makes perfect sense to call the shift "soft". (In Irish, a parallel process is called séimhiú from séimh "thin, gentle".)

[Jonlang]

And whilst it's mentioned does anyone know why the soft-mutation is soft? The aspirate and nasal mutations are pretty self-explanatory but seeing as there is no "hard" mutation to compare it with it doesn't appear to be obvious.

"Soft mutation" (treiglad meddal) is just an impressionist term for what linguists call "lenition". It has the effect of voicing unvoiced segments and spirantising stops. Perceptually, these are "softer" sounds (i.e. requiring less articulatory effort to produce and less differentiated from neighbourhing vowel segments), so it makes perfect sense to call the shift "soft". (In Irish, a parallel process is called séimhiú from séimh "thin, gentle".)

I came up with a similar mutation system for my conlang, except plosives become fricatives but retain voicing, so b > v, p > f, t > th; fricatives become plosives with voicing retained (except for lh, s and h), so v > b, dh > d, f > p; lh becomes l (and vice versa) m becomes n (and vice versa) and s and h drop from the word. But I haven't actually come up with a name for it and I'm not sure if there is one already, so I've simply labelled it β-mutation for now.

[Pole, the]

EDIT: Reading through the Berfau chapter of the Welsh Grammar BBC Learn Welsh PDFs it gives some example sentences. One is: Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain? It is then explained that this has two possible meanings:

1. Is Bethan shopping in London?
2. Does Bethan shop in London?

Now these are, really, quite different questions. The second is a more general inquiry. So would a Welsh speaker be more specific in actual day-to-day speaking and ask something more like Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain heddiw? to avoid ambiguity?

Isn't this kind of a distinction English-specific?

[linguoboy]

Isn't this kind of a distinction English-specific?

No, other languages have a habitual vs non-habitual distinction as well.

[Jonlang]

EDIT: Reading through the Berfau chapter of the Welsh Grammar BBC Learn Welsh PDFs it gives some example sentences. One is: Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain? It is then explained that this has two possible meanings:

1. Is Bethan shopping in London?
2. Does Bethan shop in London?

Now these are, really, quite different questions. The second is a more general inquiry. So would a Welsh speaker be more specific in actual day-to-day speaking and ask something more like Ydy Bethan yn siopa yn Llundain heddiw? to avoid ambiguity?

Isn't this kind of a distinction English-specific?

Isn't this kind of a distinction English-specific?

No, other languages have a habitual vs non-habitual distinction as well.

I should probably point out though that the document does state that "common sense will tell you which context is implied", so maybe it all just depends on tone and context in these circumstances. Plus, in English we can say things like "Does Bethan ever go to London to shop?" which I'm sure could be asked more-or-less the same way in Welsh too.

[linguoboy]

I should probably point out though that the document does state that "common sense will tell you which context is implied", so maybe it all just depends on tone and context in these circumstances.

That's why I speak of a "default interpretation". In actual usage, context would prompt one interpretation or the other (just as it does in English with "Is Bethan shopping in London?" which--if you think about it--can also have a habitual interpretation). And if not, you could toss in an adverb or use a different construction.

[Jonlang]

Something else which has bugged me about Welsh - when I was at primary school (so under 11 years old) we had to do certain things in Welsh, like ask for permission to visit the toilet, answer the attendance register, write the date (except in English lessons) etc. We were taught to ask the time by asking Faint o'gloch ydych chi? which appears to mean something like How much o'clock are you?. I have since learnt that most people say beth yw'r amser? which seems to make more sense. So is Faint o'gloch ydych chi? a more polite phrasing which doesn't translate properly into English?

[linguoboy]

We were taught to ask the time by asking Faint o'gloch ydych chi? which appears to mean something like How much o'clock are you?. I have since learnt that most people say beth yw'r amser? which seems to make more sense. So is Faint o'gloch ydych chi? a more polite phrasing which doesn't translate properly into English?

Sure that isn't a mishearing of Faint o'r gloch ydy hi?? It's not unusual for /h/ to be pronounced [ç] before /i/ or /j/ by English-speakers, and if your teacher overemphasised the /h/ to keep the vowels from running together, I can see how it might come to resemble /x/.