…wy a thost i'm swper fy hun

Welsh General / Questions
#1

Shwmae…

I’m re-reading Y Stelciwr by Manon Steffan Ros, and this time I’m trying to translate it so I have to dig into the details, rather than just get a broad sense of what’s going on as I did the first time around.

Dwi’n ei gwylio hi’n paratoi ei swper drwy ffenest ei chegin wrth i mi fwyta afal, wy a thost i’m swper fy hun.

It’s the last phrase that I’m unsure about. Would a fair translation be:

I watch her prepare her supper through a kitchen window while I eat an apple, egg and toast for my own supper.

Specifically, what’s the function of the i’m – a colloquial form of i fy perhaps? I know that ddim is often contracted down to 'm but that doesn’t seem to fit here.

Thanks!

#2

It’s not a colloquialism, but in fact it’s rather the opposite – you usually see this in literary or poetic Welsh. It is for all intents and purposes just an alternative way how to express the possessive pronoun when it follows a vowel.
(One other form off the top of my head is for i dy for example, which can be expressed by i’th)

1 Like
#3

So I guessed right for the wrong reason!

That’s very helpful, thanks, Hendrik. I’ve never read any formal Welsh as far as I know, so that joy is still to come.

Thanks again!

#4

If you know any of the words to Hen wlad fy nhadau you might recognise pleidiol wyf i’m gwlad now :slight_smile: The other thing is that these literary pronouns cause different mutations from the ones we’re used to after fy, dy etc. - but unless you want to write literary Welsh that’s probably not worth worrying about.