More Fun with Consonant Mutations

Those of you who spend more time than not in the linguistics department of the University of Chicago may be aware of the concept of consonant mutations in Welsh. Basically (for those of you who are not Steph), some consonants (T,C,P,B,G,D,Ll,M,Rh) mutate to other consonants at the most inconvenient times, in order to mark a) negative and interrogative verbs (Ces i swper. -> Gest ti swper? -> Ches i ddim swper.) b) possession (Father: Tad. My father: Fy nghad i. Your father: Dy dad di. Her father: Ei dad hi.) c) and gender, as well as whenever linguistic laziness calls for it, such as after vowels (Ces i dost y frecwast.) This is all part of the Welsh remnants of Indo-European*.

This week's tutor has been drilling us on the gender of nouns. Mutations are very important in gender, as feminine nouns mutate after "the", as do adjectives modifying feminine nouns mutate. Basic example:
Dog = ci (m). The big dog = Y ci mawr.
Cat = cath (f). The big cat = Y gath fawr.

Today, however, was a day of fun with exceptions. Por ejemplo:
The small garden. Yr ardd fach (gardd loses a 'g'.) BUT:
Y gem fawr, The big game, because words that come from other languages don't tend to mutate. Just to make it all the more confusing, most nouns that come from English are feminine.

The not-mutating rule holds true for the adjective braf as well, because it comes from the French. Thus the possiblity for the following:
y cwrw braf, the fine beer (cwrw being masculine, and Cwrw Braf being the name of a local bitter), BUT
y gem braf, the fine game (game being feminine).

Furthermore, "lleuad" (moon) doesn't mutate, just because it's ornery that way. Therefore, y laeth wen (the white milk), but y lleuad wen, the white moon.**

And just when you thought you were confused enough, bara (bread) is masculine, but torth (loaf) is feminine.*** And de when you mean "south" is masculine, but de when you mean "right" is feminine.

In less frustrating areas of my life, we played football/soccer last night. The McGill classicist came along and managed to introduce himself to (the ubercool) Gareth as "Hi, I'm Andrew...I'm socially awkward." Boys are so adorable when they aren't being stupid.

And I'm going over to the Patagonians' for dinner, because they've figured out that I would probably kill for Silvia's empanadas.

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*This wasn't so much a footnote as a linguistic in-joke on Indo-European. Erin draws a star in the air when she talks about it.
** "white" is one of the many adjecives that has masculine and feminine forms (gwyn/gwen). As is, for those reading this blog, "fourth".
***Many methods have been created by my friends in the program in order to keep track of genders. The Aber boys (Warrior of Devon, He of many Names, and The Son of Prophecy (Hope of the People)) posit that anything bad is feminine. Example: problem (problem), llywodraeth (government), etc. Pattern is broken by the feminine tafarn (pub). Erin, for her part, claims that when she was studying Italian, she was firmly convinced that anything phallic was masculine. "Think about it," she says. "car, masculine. Garage, feminine. There has to be a reason."