So I think this might be a really silly question… but I am finding it soooo hard to count daughters!
is it right that the singular of something in Welsh is sometimes a LONGER word than the plural, like plant and plentyn… but merch and merched is the “normal” way round, the singular is the short word and the plural is the longer word? For some reason I just CANNOT get this to stick in my head.
So we say, if we are using “Number plus singular”
un ferch (because it’s feminine and so the merch mutates)
dwy ferch (because it’s feminine so it’s dwy, and the merch mutates)
tair merch (because it’s feminine so it’s tair, but this time the merch doesn’t mutate???)
pedair ferch (because it’s feminine so it’s pedair, and the merch does mutate)
I don’t think I really understand why “three” doesn’t make merch mutate.
and if we were to use the other way to count, and it was also a feminine noun, would we say:
dau o ferched
tri o ferched
pedwar o ferched? or would we have to use the dwy, tair and pedair again??
Yes, that’s right. The thing with ‘rules’ is that there are always exceptions!
un ferch (because it’s feminine and so the merch mutates)
dwy ferch (because it’s feminine so it’s dwy, and the merch mutates)
Yes - but both genders mutate on 2: dwy ferch, dau fab
3 will sometimes take an aspirate mutation (which only affects t, c & p). I say sometimes because although it should, in informal language lots of people leave it out.
4 doesn’t mutate - pedair merch
6 also causes a soft mutation!
You’d use the feminine forms again here.
(I couldn’t be so lightning-like this time - I had a phone call mid-reply! )
And of course there’s the tendency for every mutation to turn into a soft mutation - as in the song by Chroma Tair Ferch Doeth…
ETA: for clarification, that title is not ‘good’ Welsh - arguably it’s ‘bad’ Welsh, but it’s actually just very colloquial, contemporary Welsh as some actual speakers actually speak it.
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