Medieval Welsh

A Self-Instruction Course created by Heather Rose Jones

Copyright © 2003, 2004 all rights reserved. This page most recently revised on: May 31, 2004

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Unit: 3e

Possessive Pronouns

Now that you have all the mutations, we can learn possessive pronouns. The full form of the possessive pronoun consists of the possessive word before the thing being possessed, and the regular pronoun after it.

• penn "head"
• vy mhenn i "my head"

The regular pronoun is optional. In Medieval Welsh it can be used for emphasis (my head), or perhaps to distinguish between possessives that would otherwise sound alike.

• y esgeir ef "his leg"
• y esgeir hi "her leg"

Many of the possessive pronouns cause some sort of mutation and, in fact, all the mutations are represented here. In addition, several of them cause the insertion of an "h" before words starting with a vowel. The following table gives all the basic templates and shows what mutation (if any) is required and whether h-insertion is required.

Confusion Alert!: Now we have four things that might be spelled "y" -- the two third person singular possessive pronouns, and both the definite article and the pre-verbal particle before consonants. We have three things that might be spelled "yn" -- the predicative particle, the preposition, and the possessive pronoun. You need to keep all of these options in mind when you read and disentangle the possibilities on the basis of the mutations and the context.

Exercise

Add the following words to your vocabulary and use each of them with all of the possessive pronouns. Make sure you get the mutations right.

Key to the Exercise

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