I was looking at the sentence Mae o’n golchi ei gar which was translated as He’s washing his car.
And then this sentence Wyt ti’n ei hadnabod hi? which was translated as Do you know her?
So, I am guessing that ‘ei’ can mean his or her depending on the context and or other clues in the sentence such as ‘hi’ in sentence 2.
Am I right in this assumption? Does this word act as filler in other contexts as well? Thanks.
Yes, ei can be both his and her. The his ei will cause a soft mutation to the following word (if that word begins with a letter that soft-mutates), whilst the her ei will cause an aspirate mutation (if that word begins with a letter that aspirate-mutates). If the words that follow don’t start with letters that would mutate, then there are two options - first, the word may then be followed by e/o/hi to clarify whether it’s his or hers e.g. ei sospan e/o = his saucepan / ei sospan hi = her saucepan. But if there is no e/o/hi after the word, and no mutation is possible, then I’m afraid it comes down to context.
It’s not acting as a filler though - it does mean either his, hers (or its), with or without the pairing of e/o/hi.
Siaron thank you for this. And my apologies for the late acknowledgement. I must have missed the notification that you had already replied. 