Tiny questions with quick answers - continuing thread

Welsh General / Questions
#9281

You’re not wrong, that is confusing. The only reference I could find that deals with this unruly usage is in A Welsh Grammar by Stephen J Williams, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1980, p.52, para 77, the section about mutation after relative pronouns (not actually relevant here, I think):

§ 77. Mutation after relative pronouns.
The rel. pron. a takes the soft mutation: yr hwn a fu; y sawl a welodd;
y byd a ddaw.
After ni, na the spirant mut. of c, p, t follows, and the soft mut. of b, d,
g, ll, rh, m:
y sawl ni chred; . . . na phrynodd; . . . na thorrod; . . . ni fu; . . . na
ddaw; . . . na all; . . . ni fynnant; . . . na lwyddodd; . . . ni rydd.

Initial b in forms of bod sometimes remains unmutated: rhai na buont;
peth ni bydd marw.

I does not explain it, just an observation

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#9282

mae is the Welsh word for “is” but unlike English, in Welsh it usually comes in front of the thing you’re talking about - so for “the man is” you get mae’r dyn - literally is the man which sounds like a question in English, but is just a statement in Welsh.

mae dyn yn siarad - A man is speaking / a man speaks (it can be either in English)
mae’r dyn yn siarad - The man is speaking / the man speaks

#9283

Thank you, I can get a bit caught up with getting it right. I have faith that all will become clear, or clearer in time :relaxed:.

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#9284

I promise you that it will get clearer! It all feels a bit alien to start with, because Welsh has a very different kind of grammar to English, but you’ll get used to it, and then you’ll wonder why you ever had a problem because it will begin to feel natural!

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#9285

Yes, in some ways not holding on too tightly to the English way is a benefit. I am enjoying it so much.

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#9286

Thanks Louis.
At least there is some allusion to it somewhere. But relative pronouns? That would seem to imply that the sense of the verse is “The Lord is my shepherd whom I shall not lack.”
I’ve never heard that interpetation suggested in English, but I suppose it’s possible.
Does anybody here know Biblical Hebrew?

#9288

That confused me, when I looked it up, but elsewhere (§221, p147) he says that ni(d) is used for the negative in main clauses, and either ni(d) or na(d) in relative clauses, although (§76, p52) “in modern writing na (nad, nas) have largely displaced ni (nid, nis) as negative relatives.” Apparently ni(d) and na(d) are used as both subjects and objects in relative clauses (§76, p51), although when I tried to come up with an example I automatically went for object with na(d) - Weles i ddyn nad oeddwn i’n ei adnabod “I saw a man whom I didn’t recognize.”

Tl/dr: he’s not saying that ni is always a relative pronoun, so that doesn’t affect the sense of the verse quoted; but because it can be he deals with it alongside the others.

ETA - I’ve found the answer to your original query in my Grammar of Middle Welsh & will post it after I meet my kid from school.

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#9289

@Baruch would you be able to help Verity with this?

#9290

OK, @louis and @verity-davey, this is what I’ve found in my Grammar of Middle Welsh (D. Simon Evans, Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, 1976, pp.61-62).

Basically, he says that even allowing for the vagaries of mediaeval spelling, the situation found in Middle Welsh is inconsistent. However, taking into account the evidence we’ve got, and comparing it with Old Irish, it appears to go back to a pattern where negatives in relative clauses caused a soft mutation (lenition), but in main clauses caused an aspirate/spirant mutation (p, t, c → ph, th, ch, everything else including b & m unaffected). These two separate patterns get confused, resulting in the modern “mixed mutation” that we’re used to (p, t, c get +h, everything else gets softened that can be), except that in the Middle Welsh period that merger was not complete or consistent – b and m sometimes don’t get softened.

“In the early period, the negative in a relative clause is followed by lenition of all lenitable consonants, including p, t, c… In principal clauses, on the other hand, the negative was usually followed by the spirant mutation… Only traces of an older system, however, survive in Welsh… In MW prose the earlier system has been much simplified, and the position may briefly be summarized as follows… After the negative we have the spirant mutation of p, t, c, and the lenition of the other lenitable consonants, in both principal and relative clauses. Traces of the older construction survive in non-lenition of b and m after the negative : Ny byd ‘There will not be’… but lenition occasionally occurs : Ny uynhei Gaswallawn y lad ynteu ‘Caswallawn did not wish to slay him’.”

Tl;dr – It’s William Morgan harking back to Middle Welsh, in the same way that King James leans on Wycliffe.

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#9291

Thank you. It’s all very interesting, at least the parts I can understand! I don’t know a whole lot about Middle Welsh nor grammatical terminology, and I think a fair bit has gone over my head.
It seems my question now is, how does one identify a main clause versus a relative clause? Because “blaming” William Morgan is all very well, but I still want to understand what is going on.
“…pan welaf y gwaed byddaf yn mynd heibio i chwi, ac ni fydd y pla yn eich difetha pan drawaf wlad yr Aifft.” - Exodus 12:13, BCND
This one they correct/modernise. So is this a relative clause?

#9292

How about the Septuagint Greek version: Psalms 23:1 - ψαλμὸς τῷ Δαυιδ.... - Interlinear Study Bible That clearly does not use a relative pronoun but a conjunction.

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#9293

plus ça change, …

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#9294

I think the whole relative clause thing is a distraction - Williams mentions them only to say that ni(d) is used in main clauses as well, and Evans says that by the Middle Welsh period you pretty much see the same mutations in both main and relative clauses, so it’s not really relevant.

The rest of the grammatical jargon is simply Evans saying ‘lenition’ where most people say ‘soft mutation’ when talking about Welsh, so that his ‘lenition of the other lenitable consonants’ is the same thing as my more casual ‘everything gets softened that can be’.

So the take-home message is that the modern mixed mutation in negative clauses, which would lead you to expect ni fydd, evolved/got cobbled together in the Middle Welsh period; and when it was brand new, b and m didn’t always quite follow the new rules. Consequently, in particularly old-fashioned Modern Welsh - such as the Bible, or Literary Welsh modelled after it - some b- words still escape.

This is just an independent (main) clause, joined on to the preceding one with an ‘and’ : “and the plague shall not destroy you…” It’s following the modern mixed mutation following ni as you expected the other verse to do, because b- words sometimes did so already in the Middle Welsh period (and almost always do today).

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#9295

Bryn Terfel and Rhys Meirion in their beautiful rendition of “Salm” on their album Benedictus did not let that b- escape, although I had to turn up the volume to be certain that they sang “ni fydd”

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#9296

Okay, so if it’s a main clause and those used to get the aspirate, that may explain William Morgan leaving it as ni bydd (he did). However, it leaves me still confused as to whether there’s any rhyme or reason behind the mix of ni fydd and ni bydd in the 2004 translation. In modern times, usually these things have a whole team behind them and there’s reasons for every single word choice.
Maybe the answer really is just “they missed a couple” or “they felt like it”. If so, I’ll simply have to accept that it’s going to drive me nuts for a while. Because “sometimes” bod resists mutation is so very frustratingly unclear. When? Why? How do I know now which to expect, or which to write myself? Vibes? :sweat_smile:
C’est la vie.

#9297

I’m gonna go with vibes.

Sometimes, you just have to let the details go and focus on the gist, because no one out there is going to police your mutations, and even native speakers don’t always get them right. No one minds.

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#9298

Ahh… I think I must have conflated your question with someone else who was asking after a copy of the Beibl William Morgan, and didn’t realize we were already in 2004!

I agree about the whole committee weighing every word - that is definitely how these things are done these days. However, I suspect that doing a new Welsh Bible is more like doing the NRSV than the NIV or the Good News: yes, you’re going back to the Greek, and the Hebrew, and the Aramaic, but you’re also contending with the weight of tradition in your own vernacular - all the verses that people know off by heart from an older translation, that will jar and discomfit people if you change them too much, or unnecessarily.

My feeling is that perhaps the modern translators have indeed gone with vibes (although I’m prepared to stand corrected): that if the grammars say bod doesn’t always have to soften, and you’ve got a verse like “The Lord is my shepherd” that your readers have all known since the cradle, you leave it in the form they know and love. Elsewhere, if it’s not so familiar (and would feel like an archaism), you modernise.

As a learner, I think I’d just try to stick to the modern norms, without trying to introduce cunning archaisms that might just sound like me getting things wrong…

ETA Although, as @suw says, other people get them “wrong” too, and they probably won’t notice if you do!

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#9299

Well actually, I have asked after a copy of the BWM before. But that isn’t because I didn’t know more modern versions exist. I just love the poetry of it, and wish for a more readable print copy. If anybody knows where to buy one that’d be great!
My source for quick comparisons has been Ap Beibl. Every Welsh translation ever seems to be in there, from a few scraps in 1546 to the “modern and colloquial” beibl.net version of 2015. (That one does its own thing entirely. Yr Arglwydd ydy fy mugail i; mae gen i bopeth dw i angen.) 1567-2004, everyone who used ni/ny bydd/bydh in that Psalm did so without lenition (nice word).
A very cursory scan through the early part of the BCND showed me another ni bydd and a ni fydd, so… :woman_shrugging:
I suppose I’ll just keep reading lots of different things and maybe something will click. Or not.