Shwmae bawb,
I’ve heard that aspirate mutation out in the wild isn’t heard that much and if it is heard it’s mainly C / CH. Although SSiW to me seems to teach colloquial and ‘slangy’ speech e.g bo fi it also teaches the use of AM e.g cyn gynted â phosib, mwy na thebyg, ei thridegau…
I just wanted to get some of your thoughts on this and your experiences with AM in everyday speech.
Diolch!
In the case of things like cyn gynted â phosib and mwy na thebyg, you tend to hear the mutations all the time because these are set phrases. With ei thridegau, you’d hear the mutation because it’s necessary to distinguish between ei/his and ei/her, but where it’s not necessary to distinguish in this manner, the useage is more lax. I hear 1st language speakers here in Caernarfon say “te a coffi” as much as I hear “te a choffi”, but also hear more “coffi a te” than “coffi a the”.
Ah thank you so much for the response. I didn’t really take into account that these are set phrases so I can see why now! I would’ve thought that the soft mutation with the male ei would be enough to set it apart ei dridegau (fe) / ei tridegau (hi) but maybe in speech this isn’t enough of a distinction?
Diolch yn fawr eto!