Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales

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A mixed mutation occurs when negating conjugated verbs. Initial consonants undergo aspirate mutation if subject to it, and soft mutation if not. For example, clywais i ("I heard") and dwedais i ("I said") are negated as chlywais i ddim ("I heard nothing") and ddwedais i ddim ("I said nothing"). In practice, soft mutation is often used even when aspirate mutation would be possible (e.g. glywais i ddim); this reflects the fact that aspirate mutation is in general infrequent in the colloquial language (see above).

I absolutely loved this. I usually devour essay anthologies in one sitting, but I deliberately paced this one over a week so I had time to sit with each piece.for nouns after the masculine numeral three ( tri) – tri physgodyn 'three fish(es)' (< pysgodyn 'fish') Qualifiers (adjectives, nouns, or verb-nouns) used to qualify feminine singular nouns, e.g. cath fawr 'a big cat' [< mawr]; hogan ganu 'a singing girl' [< canu]. For example, the word "cat" in Welsh is "cath" (pronounced /kaːθ/). To form the plural, you add the suffix "-od" to get "cathod" (pronounced /kaːθɔd/), which means "cats." However, the word "car" in Welsh is "car" (pronounced /kar/). To form the plural, you add the suffix "-au" to get "ceir" (pronounced /keir/), which means "cars."

In the sentence Mae trwyn Siaco yn cynnwys plastig ("Siaco's nose contains plastic") cynnwys is not mutated.

TeachMe! Welsh

Issa’s collection My Body Can House Two Hearts was published in 2019. She also contributed to Welsh (Plural): Essays on the Future of Wales and The Mab, a retelling of the Mabinogi stories for children, both published this year. The common phrase dwn i ddim "I don't know" uses a special negative form of the first person present. The initial d- in this form originates in the negative particle nid: nid wn i> nid wn i ddim> dwn i ddim. Such a development is restricted to a very small set of verb forms, principally this form of gwybod and various forms of bod (e.g., does, doedd, from nid oes and nid oedd respectively)." In words beginning with an-, the n is dropped before the mutated consonant (except if the resultant mutation allows for a double n), e.g. an + personol → amhersonol (although it would be retained before a non-mutating consonant, e.g. an + sicr → ansicr). What all this boils down to is: As a beginner Welsh learner you just can’t tell. The only solution to this dilemma is to learn the plural form with every new noun you come across. Your ears will get used to certain patterns eventually, but it takes a while – and may still be misleading.

She co-founded the Cardiff open-mic night Where I’m Coming From, worked in the writers’ room for Channel 4’s We Are Lady Parts and was a member of the first cohort of writers who took part in Literature Wales’s Representing Wales programme in 2021. He also recounts his time as a young teacher at the Aberfan Workers’ Education Association in 1966, and the day he arrived at the village shortly after the slurry slip that killed 116 schoolchildren. “We realised after an hour or so that there was nothing we could do,” he says. The Sewel Convention of 1999 embodies a constitutional rule which suggests that the UK parliament will “not normally” legislate on a devolved issue unless the devolved legislature has given its consent. This, like the UK’s unwritten constitution, is a relic of an era when gentleman’s agreements and the sense of good old British fair play were deemed as binding as any law, and it is obsolete in the age of the political liar utterly unburdened by shame, the conman and the charlatan, the incompetent propelled by entitlement and privilege which goes uncontested in a land of entrenched and masochistic deference. The elected representatives of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have voted to veto a huge transformation to their economic and political status, but because they have no real power to do so, the hollow men in London do not care. They simply do not care. This contempt is entirely lawful, but it will exact a colossal cost. Suffer it. The preposition yn becomes ym if the following noun (mutated or not) begins with m, and becomes yng if the following noun begins with ng. E.g. Bangor ("Bangor"), ym Mangor ("in Bangor"); Caerdydd ("Cardiff"), yng Nghaerdydd ("in Cardiff"). Hiraeth, saudade, duende. These words; these concepts. They embody an idea that is all about calmness but has no place for comfort, and if I could explain what they mean to a person who’s never felt their pulse then I would.

Issa was chosen as national poet after a public call for nominations and an extensive selection process. On behalf of the selection panel, Ashok Ahir president of the court and chair of the board of the National Eisteddfod of Wales, said that Issa had a “cross-community voice that speaks to every part of the country”. Language is also a much-discussed issue. Andy Welch writes of how it is “faintly surreal, but not unusual, that someone could be born and raised in a country and not speak the language.” Dan Evans describes how communities where over 50% of the population speak Welsh are in precipitous decline. Yet “Despite everything, Welshness persists.” Morgan Owen writes of his non-Welsh-speaking mother’s decision to send her children to a Welsh medium school and buy them Welsh books as a gesture of defiance as much as love. “In such a situation, I myself become the medium that bridges the past and future.” This defiance is present throughout the book. Wales may be a country beset by deep-seated problems, but the writers of these essays have a confidence and a determination to find a way forward. There is no such thing as a true history,” historian, Martin Johnes, writes here. “It will always be rewritten and reinterpreted.” That is the starting point of this vibrant collection of essays on the future of Wales. A shared but static sense of history can be a comfort to a people. But it can also be cruelly exclusive. For instance, the concept of Wales as a Celtic nation is widely accepted. Yet as Johnes points out, this marginalises the non-Celtic migrants who have settled in the country over centuries. Thus are new interpretations of history always needed. In these essays, the writers were charged with “reimagining the Wales we live and see”. They do so with undeniable success. While the singular demonstrative pronouns this and that have separate forms for masculine and feminine, there is only a single plural form in each case ( these, those). This is consistent with a general principle in Welsh that gender is not marked in the plural. The latter forms are also often used for intangible, figurative, or general ideas (though cf. also the use of 'hi' discussed above).