The use of “ei” has appeared a few times and I was wondering if there is a simple explanation as to why this is used when it is?
ie: do, wnes i ei fwynhau; Dw i isio ei darllen yn fawr iawn; Mae hi isio ei gwylio’n fawr iawn
Thanks in advance
In your examples, it’s being “it” (although literally, it means his/her) - in the full version, you’d have “ei (verb) hi/e/o”, with the “it” like a sandwich wrapped around the verb
wnes i ei fwynhau hi; dw i isio ei darllen o; mae hi isio ei gwylio hi
but in speech the hi/e/o is very often left out.
Many thanks Siaron. A lot to remember but thanks for explaining this.
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The use of ‘ei’ and the mutation (or not) that it causes is confusing me. Jan-Hutchins, you wrote the sentence, ‘Do, wnes i ei fwnhau’, but in Challenge 17, quite close to the beginning, what I seem to be hearing is, ‘Do, wnes i ei mwynhau yn fawr iawn, diolch’. Is it ‘mwynhau’ or ‘fwynhau’ here? - Further on in the same lesson, we have ‘Wnes ti ei fwynhau?’ Am I hearing this correctly?
I’ve read that the mutations can occur depending on the gender of the noun, but how does that apply here?
The mutation of m > f here just depends on whether the ‘it’ you are referring to is a masculine or feminine ‘it’.
e.g. if you say “I enjoyed it” and are talking about a book, which is a masculine noun, you’d say “wnes i ei fwynhau” but if you were talking about a film, which is a feminine noun, you’d say “wnes i ei mwynhau”.
However, if you’re not sure of the gender of the ‘it’ you’re referring to, don’t worry - use whichever comes to mind first, and over time with exposure to more and more spoken Welsh, your brain will (seemingly all on its own!) begin to automatically match gendered words with their mutations.
This is one of the things that the ‘old course’ covers in detail but the current one doesn’t even mention, and I’d like to see at least some of it brought back into the current programme.
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Thank you for answering, Siaron. That was very helpful.
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