Pronunciation Puzzle

Welsh General / Questions
#1

I am having a bit of a mental blank over different in pronunciation of the short form past and short term future 3rd person forms of mynd, gwneud, and dod in particular. That is to say:

Aeth o vs eith o

Naeth o vs neith o

I just cannot seem to get it through my head how to pronounce/distinguish the two dipthongs in the middle.

As far as I can see, there are three possibilities:

[eye]

[aah]

[ay] as in bay, day etc

The two examples I can think of from the new course are:

They both came … Daeth y ddau … which Aran to my ear pronounces d[eye]th

And

He didn’t say … Naeth o’m dweud … which I hear as n[aah]th

I can’t think of any examples of the short form 3 person future in the New Course. As Dee pointed out to me, there are plenty of examples in the Old Course 3, but they tend to be all past tenses together or all future together, so you don’t hear them side by side, which is how my confusion started.

I am coming round to thinking that the answer must be that ‘ae’ in the short form past can be pronounced either [eye] OR [aah] depending on what? Taste? Dialect? A rule I haven’t yet worked out? And therefore that the ‘ei’ is the short form future is pronounced [ay] to rhyme with day.

Can anyone either confirm or set me right?

Confused person with poor aural memory :frowning:

#2

yup - dialect difference mostly, but both are acceptable.

yup - well that’s how I say it but then my ‘dialect’ is more ‘hotchpotch’ than anything :wink:

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#3

Thank you Siaron!

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#4

I’ve flagged this up for Catrin too… :slight_smile:

@CatrinLliarJones

#5

Thanks Aran. I mentioned it on the Gair y Ddwrnod thread too, before I realised Catrin had more important things to think about right now and decided to try and figure things out for myself.

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#6

Sorry to but in. In my lmited knowledge, i think we are saying nath in the south. Also my friend from Corwen via Cricieth now in Swansea says nath. Thats not gonna help is it? Perhaps shes talking about my Welsh, :rofl:
Edit: so that was the past form. See Siarons post below for a really helpful guide for the future use.

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#7

would it help to think of ‘gobeithio’ as a prompt? - we hope for the future not the past, so the future forms with eith in them rhyme with the eith in gobeithio :wink:

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#8

I’m so very sorry for my absence and lateness in replying! Been stuck in a bit of a perfect storm here and it seems I’m not always as adept at multitasking as I’d like to be.

I’ll get my head round this and try to post some recordings on the Word of the Day thread tomorrow, which will hopefully help with your vowel sounds. :slight_smile:

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#9

Please don’t apologise, @CatrinLliarJones Catrin. What you are dealing with is far more important than my mental blocks!

And @siaronjames, I like your mnemonic. I have thought of one example that IS in the new course too:

What will you do? Be’ nei di?

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