I fewn

Welsh General / Questions
#1

Hello all!
I’m on lesson 13 of the old Northern course where we are learning about ‘out’ and ‘in’.
‘Out’ is ‘allan’ so that doesn’t do any mutating.
‘In’ is ‘mewn’ but this sounds as if it is always mutating to ‘i fewn’ but I don’t understand why that is happening.
‘Allan’ doesn’t sound as if it has ‘i’ preceding it so I don’t know why ‘mewn’ does.
I’m going with the flow and saying ‘i fewn’ every time but don’t understand why I’m doing it!
Any advice very gratefully received!

#2

This is something that happens in spoken Welsh.
In standard Welsh, mewn doesn’t mutate after i but because, usually, i causes a soft mutation in most other cases, in spoken Welsh this has crept in to i fewn too.

#3

thanks that does help, though I still don’t get why there’s an ‘i’ before ‘mewn’ and not before ‘allan’, or is there one and I’m just not hearing it?

#4

And also perhaps by analogy with o fewn within, where it always mutates (i.e. you can’t say *o mewn)

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