Hi, I’m a bit confused about the mi, does anyone know what it is for?
It’s the so-called “affirmative marker”, used to emphasize a positive sentence. It’s largely optional, and it’s rarely used in speech, but can be seen in writing occasionally. “Mi” is the northern form, in the south you’d see “Fe”. (And both forms cause soft mutation.)
What Hendrik said! But I’ll just add that the soft mutation often stays even when the mi/fe is omitted.
Just to add that fe is very much rarer in normal speech than mi.
Thanks, that’s helpful
Depends where you are
No no - it’s very common in speech in many areas, and frowned upon in more formal writing.
Thanks for the correction. As I am not in a Welsh speaking part of the globe I probably shouldn’t try to extrapolate from my obviously skewed perception of what constitutes normal use in speech or writing.
Not at all
And it IS true that some areas don’t use the affirmative particles at all - where I was in Llanafan the native speakers never ever used them!
Thanks to you all! I will mainly be in Gwynedd, around Blaenau Ffestiniog, so I’ll listen out to see whether to use them or not.
Or don’t worry about it at all, and just use whatever comes to mind first, since you’ll be understood fine either way (and will over time inevitably adapt to the patterns you hear most often)…
And of course in some ways it’s just as well NOT to use them if you’re not too sure about them, because at least then you don’t make the REAL mistake of accidentally using them in questions and negatives.
I use mi in spoken Welsh in positive statements all the time…
This makes me happy.
Dw i’n hapus iawn! Mae eich llyfrau chi’n ddefnyddiol iawn.
Dw i’n falch o glywed hynny - diolch!
You’ve doubtless seen it in the affirmative future tense as well (“Mi fydda i”, etc.)