- King, G. (2003). Modern Welsh. Oxford: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28270-5
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The morphology of the Welsh language has many characteristics likely to be unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. Welsh is a moderately inflected language. Verbs inflect for person, number, tense, and mood, with affirmative, interrogative, and negative conjugations of some verbs. There is no case inflection in Modern Welsh.
Modern Welsh can be written, and spoken, in several levels of formality, for example colloquial or literary,[1][2] as well as different dialects. The grammar described in this article is for Colloquial Welsh, which is used for speech and informal writing. Literary Welsh is closer to the form of Welsh used in William Morgan's 1588 translation of the Bible and can be seen in formal writing. It does not reflect the spoken language presented here.
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See also: Lenition |
Initial consonant mutation is a phenomenon common to all Insular Celtic languages, although there is no evidence of it in the ancient Continental Celtic languages of the first millennium AD; nor was there any evidence of this in the Insular Celtic languages around the 500s.
The first consonant of a word in Welsh may change when preceded by certain words (e.g. i, o, yn, and a), or because of some other grammatical context (such as when the grammatical object follows a conjugated verb). Welsh has three mutations: the soft mutation (Welsh: treiglad meddal), the nasal mutation (Welsh: treiglad trwynol), and the aspirate mutation (Welsh: treiglad llaes; also called spirant mutation in some grammars). These are also represented in the orthography:
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*Soft mutation causes initial /ɡ/ to be deleted. For example, gardd "garden" becomes yr ardd "the garden"; or gwaith "work" becomes ei waith "his work".
A blank cell indicates no change.
The mutation ts → j reflects a change heard in modern words borrowed from English. Borrowed words like tsips (chips) can often be heard in Wales and the mutated form jips is also common. Dw i'n mynd i gael tsips (I'm going to get chips); Mae gen i jips (I have chips). Despite this the 'ts' → 'j' mutation is not usually included in the classic list of Welsh mutations and is rarely taught in formal classes. Nevertheless, it is a part of the colloquial language and is used by native, first-language speakers.
The word for "stone" is carreg, but "the stone" is y garreg (soft mutation), "my stone" is fy ngharreg (nasal mutation) and "her stone" is ei charreg (aspirate mutation). These examples represent usage in the standard language; there is some regional and idiolectal variation in colloquial usage. In particular, the soft mutation is often used where nasal or aspirate mutation might be expected on the basis of these examples.[3]
Mutation is not triggered by the form of the preceding word; the meaning and grammatical function of the word are also relevant. For example, while yn meaning "in" triggers nasal mutation, homonyms of yn do not. For example:
The soft mutation (Welsh: treiglad meddal) is by far the most common mutation in Welsh. When words undergo soft mutation, the general pattern is that unvoiced plosives become voiced plosives, and voiced plosives become fricatives or disappear; some fricatives also change, and the full list is shown in the above table.
In some cases a limited soft mutation takes place. This differs from the full soft mutation in that words beginning with rh- and ll- do not mutate.
Common situations where the limited soft mutation occurs include:
Common situations where the full soft mutation occurs are as follows – this list is by no means exhaustive:
The occurrence of the soft mutation often obscures the origin of placenames to non-Welsh-speaking visitors. For example, Llanfair is the church of Mair (Mary), and Pontardawe is the bridge on the Tawe (pont ar + Tawe).
The nasal mutation (Welsh: treiglad trwynol) normally occurs:
Notes
1. The preposition yn becomes ym if the following noun (mutated or not) begins with m, and becomes yng if the following noun begins with ng. E.g. Bangor ("Bangor"), ym Mangor ("in Bangor"); Caerdydd ("Cardiff"), yng Nghaerdydd ("in Cardiff").
2. In words beginning with an-, the n is dropped before the mutated consonant (except if the resultant mutation allows for a double n), e.g. an + personol → amhersonol (although it would be retained before a non-mutating consonant, e.g. an + sicr → ansicr).
3. In some dialects the soft mutation is often substituted after yn giving forms like yn Gaerdydd for "in Cardiff", or it is even lost altogether, especially with place names, giving yn Caerdydd. This would be considered incorrect in formal registers.
Under nasal mutation, voiced stop consonants become nasals, and unvoiced stops become voiceless nasals. A non-standard mutation also occurs in some parts of North Wales where nasal consonants are also unvoiced, e.g. fy mham ("my mother"; standard: fy mam). This may also occur (unlike the ordinary nasal mutation) after ei ("her"): e.g. ei nhain hi ("her grandmother", standard ei nain hi).
The name aspirate mutation can be misleading as the affected consonants do not become aspirated, but become fricatives. This is represented by the addition of an h after the original initial consonant (c /k/, p /p/, t /t/ → ch /χ/, ph /f/, th /θ/), but the resultant forms are pronounced as single phonemes.
The aspirate mutation occurs:
Aspirate mutation is the least-used mutation in colloquial Welsh. The only word that it always follows in everyday language is ei ("her") and it is also found in set phrases, e.g. mwy na thebyg ("more than likely"). Its occurrence is unusual in the colloquial Southern phrase dyna pham ("that's why") as dyna causes the soft mutation, not aspirate mutation. Colloquially, the aspirate mutation is often replaced by the soft mutation, or ignored all together – particularly mutation of t- and p-; one is likely to hear paid â phoeni, paid â poeni, and paid poeni for 'don't worry'.
A mixed mutation occurs when negating conjugated verbs. Initial consonants undergo aspirate mutation if subject to it, and soft mutation if not. For example, clywais i ("I heard") and dwedais i ("I said") are negated as chlywais i ddim ("I heard nothing") and ddwedais i ddim ("I said nothing"). In practice, soft mutation is often used even when aspirate mutation would be possible (e.g. glywais i ddim); this reflects the fact that aspirate mutation is in general infrequent in the colloquial language (see above).
Under some circumstances an h is added to the beginning of words that begin with vowels, a process commonly called 'h-prothesis' and usually called pre-vocalic aspiration (PVA) by linguists. This occurs after the possessive pronouns ei ("her"), ein ("our") and eu ("their"), e.g. oedran ("age"), ei hoedran hi ("her age"). It also occurs with ugain ("twenty") after ar ("on") in the traditional vigesimal counting system, e.g. un ar hugain ("twenty-one", literally "one on twenty").
Although aspirate mutation also involves the addition of h in spelling, the environments for aspirate mutation and initial h addition do not overlap except for ei ("her").
Welsh has no indefinite article. This means that indefiniteness is implied by the lack of definite article or determiner. The noun cath, therefore, means both 'cat' and 'a cat'.
English has no plural indefinite article proper, but often uses the word 'some' in place of one: compare "I have an apple" and "I have some apples", where the word 'some' is being used as an article because the English language calls for something in this position, compare "I have apples" and "I have some apples", the former is rarely encountered in English. In these types of English sentences, the word 'some' is therefore left untranslated due to there being no concept of an indefinite article in Welsh: mae gen i afalau ('I have [some] apples').
The definite article, which precedes the words it modifies and whose usage differs little from that of English, has the forms y, yr, and ’r. The rules governing their usage are:
The article triggers the soft mutation when it is used with feminine singular nouns, e.g. tywysoges "(a) princess" but y dywysoges ("the princess").
The definite article is used in Welsh where it would not be used in English in the following ways:
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Main article: Colloquial Welsh nouns |
As in most other Indo-European languages, all nouns belong to a certain grammatical gender; the genders in Welsh are masculine and feminine. A noun's gender usually conforms to its referent's natural gender when it has one (e.g. mam 'mother' is grammatically feminine), but otherwise there are no major patterns (except that, as in many languages, certain noun suffixes show a consistent gender, as sometimes do nouns referring to certain classes of thing, e.g. all months of the year in Welsh are masculine) and gender must simply be learnt.
Welsh has two systems of grammatical number. Singular/plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system of English, although unlike English, Welsh noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways, i.e. the plural form cannot be discerned simply by its singular form. Most nouns form the plural with a suffix (the most common, by far, is -au), e.g. tad / tadau. Others form the plural through vowel change (a process known as affection in Celtic languages), e.g. bachgen / bechgyn 'boy / boys'. Still others form their plurals through some combination of the two, e.g. chwaer / chwiorydd 'sister / sisters'.
A few nouns also display a dual number, e.g. llaw 'hand', dwylo '(two) hands', though llaw also has the general plural llawau. The dual dwylo comes from combining llaw with the feminine numeral dwy 'two'; dwylo is only used to refer to the hands of a single person, else llawau is used, e.g. dy ddwylo 'your hands', eich dwylo 'your hands', fy nwylo 'my hands', ein dwylo 'our hands', but mae llawau gyda phobol 'people have hands'. Deufis is used for 'a period of two months' and deuddydd is 'a period of two days', these using dau rather than dwy.[4]
Welsh also has a special 'plural' for 'a period of three days', tridiau which is commonly used across Wales.[4]
The other system of grammatical number is the collective/singulative. The nouns in this system form the singulative by adding the suffix -yn (for masculine nouns) or -en (for feminine nouns) to the collective noun. Most nouns which belong in this system are frequently found in groups, for example, plant "children" and plentyn "a child", or coed "trees" and coeden "a tree". In dictionaries, the collective form, being the root form, is given first.
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Main article: Colloquial Welsh adjectives |
Adjectives normally follow the noun they qualify, while a few, such as hen, pob, annwyl, and holl ("old", "every", "dear", "whole") precede it. For the most part, adjectives are uninflected, though there are a few with distinct masculine/feminine or singular/plural forms. After feminine singular nouns, adjectives receive the soft mutation.
Adjective comparison in Welsh is fairly similar to the English system. Adjectives with one or two syllables receive the endings -ach "-er" and -a(f) "-est", which change final b, d, g into p, t, c by provection, e. g. teg "fair", tecach "fairer", teca(f) "fairest". Adjectives with two or more syllables use the words mwy "more" and mwya "most", e. g. teimladwy "sensitive", mwy teimladwy "more sensitive", mwya teimladwy "most sensitive". Adjectives with two syllables can go either way. There is an additional degree of comparison, the equative, meaning "as ... as ...".
These are the possessive adjectives:
| Singular | Translation | Plural | Translation | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | fy, 'y(n) | my | ein | our | |
| Second Person | dy | your, thy | eich | your | |
| Third Person | ei | his, her, its | eu | their | |
The possessive adjectives precede the noun they qualify, which is often followed by the corresponding form of the personal pronoun, e.g. fy mara i "my bread", dy fara di "your bread", ei fara fe "his bread", etc. The corresponding pronoun is often dropped in the spoken language, fy mara (my bread), dy fara (your bread), ei fara (his bread) and ei bara (her bread).
The possessive adjective fy is most often heard as 'yn or 'y followed by the mutated noun. For example, bara ('bread') would likely be heard as 'y mara ('my bread').
The demonstrative adjectives are yma "this"' and yna "that" (this usage derives from their original function as adverbs meaning "here" and "there" respectively). When used in this context they are almost always shortened to 'ma and 'na. They follow the noun they qualify, which also takes the article. For example, y llyfr "the book", y llyfr 'ma "this book", y llyfr 'na "that book"; literally the book here and the book there.
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Main article: Colloquial Welsh pronouns |
The Welsh personal pronouns are:
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | mi, i, fi | ni | |
| Second Person | ti, di | chi | |
| Third Person | Masculine | e/fe, o/fo | nhw |
| Feminine | hi | ||
The Welsh masculine-feminine gender distinction is reflected in the pronouns. There is, consequently, no word corresponding to English "it", and the choice of e/o (south and north Welsh respectively) or hi depends on the grammatical gender of the antecedent.
The English dummy or expletive "it" construction in phrases like "it's raining" or "it was cold last night" also exists in Welsh and other Indo-European languages like French, German, and Dutch, but not in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Indo-Aryan or Slavic languages. Unlike other masculine-feminine languages, which often default to the masculine pronoun in the construction, Welsh uses the feminine singular hi, thus producing sentences like:
However, colloquially the pronoun is often omitted when it would be translated as "it" in English, leaving:
Third-person masculine singular forms o and fo are heard in parts of mid- and north Wales, while e and fe are heard in parts of mid-, west and south Wales.
The pronoun forms i, e, and o are used as subjects after a verb. In the inflected future of the verbs mynd, gwneud, dod, and cael, first-person singular constructions like do fi may be heard. I, e, and o are also used as objects with compound prepositions, for example o flaen o 'in front of him'. Fi, fe, and fo are used after conjunctions and non-inflected prepositions, and also as the object of an inflected verb:
Fe and fo exclusively are used as subjects with the inflected conditional:
Both i, e, and o and fi, fe, and fo are heard with inflected prepositions, as objects of verbal nouns, and also as following pronouns with their respective possessive adjectives:
The use of first-person singular mi is limited in the spoken language, appearing in i mi "to/for me" or as the subject with the verb ddaru, used in a preterite construction.
Ti is found most often as the second-person singular pronoun, however di is used as the subject of inflected future forms, as a reinforcement in the imperative, and as following pronoun to the possessive adjective dy ... "your ..."
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Further information: T–V distinction |
Chi, in addition to serving as the second-person plural pronoun, is also used as a singular in formal situations, as is in French and Russian. Conversely, ti can be said to be limited to the informal singular, such as when speaking with a family member, a friend, or a child. This usage corresponds closely to the practice in other European languages. An alternative form of ti, used almost exclusively in some north-western dialects, is chdi;[5][6] as an independent pronoun it occurs especially frequently after a vowel sound at the end of the phrase (e.g. efo chdi, i chdi, wela i chdi, dyna chdi).[5]
The reflexive pronouns are formed with the possessive adjective followed by hun "self". There is variation between North and South forms. The first person singular possessive pronoun fy is usually pronounced as if spelt y(n).
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| North | First Person | fy hun | ein hun |
| Second Person | dy hun | eich hun | |
| Third Person | ei hun | eu hun | |
| South | First Person | fy hunan | ein hunain |
| Second Person | dy hunan | eich hunain, eich hunan | |
| Third Person | ei hunan | eu hunain | |
There is no gender distinction in the third person singular.
Welsh has special emphatic forms of the personal pronouns.
The term 'emphatic pronoun' is misleading since they do not always indicate emphasis. They are perhaps more correctly termed 'conjunctive, connective or distinctive pronouns' since they are used to indicate a connection between or distinction from another nominal element. For example, 'minnau' may on occasion be best translated 'I/me, for my part'; 'I/me, on the other hand', 'I/me, however', or even simply 'I/me'. Full contextual information is necessary to interpret their function in any given sentence.
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | minnau, innau, finnau | ninnau | |
| Second Person | tithau | chithau | |
| Third Person | Masculine | fyntau (yntau) | nhwythau |
| Feminine | hithau | ||
The emphatic pronouns can be used with possessive adjectives in the same way as the simple pronouns are used (with the added function of distinction or connection).
While the singular demonstrative pronouns this and that have separate forms for masculine and feminine, there is only a single plural form in each case (these, those). This is consistent with a general principle in Welsh that gender is not marked in the plural. The latter forms are also often used for intangible, figurative, or general ideas (though cf. also the use of 'hi' discussed above).
| Masculine | Feminine | Intangible | |
|---|---|---|---|
| this | hwn | hon | hyn |
| that | hwnnw, hwnna | honno, honna | hynny |
| these | y rhain | ||
| those | y rheiny | ||
In certain expressions, hyn may represent "now" and hynny may represent "then".
In Colloquial Welsh, the majority of tenses and moods make use of an auxiliary verb, usually bod "to be" or gwneud "to do". The conjugation of bod is dealt with in Irregular Verbs below.
There are five periphrastic tenses in Colloquial Welsh which make use of bod: present, imperfect, future, and (less often) pluperfect; these are used variously in the indicative, conditional and (rarely) subjunctive. The preterite, future, and conditional tenses have a number of periphrastic constructions, but Welsh also maintains inflected forms of these tenses, demonstrated here with talu 'pay' (pluperfect conjugation is rarely found beyond the verb 'bod').
| talu — 'to pay' | Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preterite | First Person | talais | talon |
| Second Person | talaist | taloch | |
| Third Person | talodd | talon | |
| Future | First Person | talaf | talwn |
| Second Person | teli | talwch | |
| Third Person | talith | talan | |
| Conditional | First Person | talwn | talen |
| Second Person | talet | talech | |
| Third Person | talai | talen | |
Questions are formed by effecting soft mutation on the verb (the effect of the interrogative particle 'a', often elided in speech and informal writing), though increasingly the soft mutation is being used in all situations. Negative forms are expressed with ddim after the pronoun and the mixed mutation, though here the soft mutation is taking over in informal registers (dales i ddim for thales i ddim).
Bod 'to be' is irregular. In addition to having inflected forms of the preterite, future, and conditional, it also maintains inflected present and imperfect forms which are used frequently as auxiliaries with other verbs. Bod has separate conjugations for (a) affirmative and (b) interrogative and negative forms of the present indicative (there are also further variations in the third person singular, in the context of dependent clauses). The apparent high irregularity of this tense can be simplified and rationalised by tracing back the divergences to the standard formal written forms: e.g. 'dyw e ddim' and 'dydy e ddim' or 'dydi o ddim' (he is not) can all be seen as informal variants of 'nid ydyw ef (ddim)'.
The present tense in particular shows divergence between north and southern dialects. Though the situation is undoubtedly more complicated, King (2003) notes the following variations in the present tense as spoken (not as written according to the standard orthography):
| Affirmative (I am) | Interrogative (Am I?) | Negative (I am not) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| North | First Person | dw | dan | ydw? | ydan? | (dy)dw | (dy)dan |
| Second Person | —, (r)wyt | dach | wyt? | (y)dach? | dwyt | (dy)dach | |
| Third Person | mae | maen | ydy? | ydyn? | dydy | dydyn | |
| South | First Person | rw, w | ŷn, — | ydw? | ŷn? | (d)w | ŷn |
| Second Person | —, (r)wyt | ych | wyt? | ych? | — | (ych) | |
| Third Person | mae | maen | ydy?, yw? | ŷn? | dyw | ŷn | |
| Affirmative (I am) | Interrogative (Am I?) | Negative (I am not) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| Preterite | First Person | bues | buon | fues? | fuon? | fues | fuon |
| Second Person | buest | buoch | fuest? | fuoch? | fuest | fuoch | |
| Third Person | buodd | buon | fuodd? | fuon? | fuodd | fuon | |
| Imperfect | First Person | roeddwn | roedden | oeddwn? | oedden? | doeddwn | doedden |
| Second Person | roeddet | roeddech | oeddet? | oeddech? | doeddet | doeddech | |
| Third Person | roedd | roeddyn | oedd? | oeddyn? | doedd | doeddyn | |
| Future | First Person | bydda | byddwn | fydda? | fyddwn? | fydda | fyddwn |
| Second Person | byddi | byddwch | fyddi? | fyddwch? | fyddi | fyddwch | |
| Third Person | bydd | byddan | fydd? | fyddan? | fydd | fyddan | |
Bod also has a conditional, for which there are two stems:
| Affirmative | Interrogative | Negative | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| bydd- | First Person | byddwn | bydden | fyddwn? | fydden? | fyddwn | fydden |
| Second Person | byddet | byddech | fyddet? | fyddech? | fyddet | fyddech | |
| Third Person | byddai | bydden | fyddai? | fydden? | fyddai | fydden | |
| bas- | First Person | baswn | basen | faswn? | fasen? | faswn | fasen |
| Second Person | baset | basech | faset? | fasech? | faset | fasech | |
| Third Person | basai | basen | fasai? | fasen? | fasai | fasen | |
A few verbs which have bod in the verbnoun display certain irregular characteristics of bod itself. Gwybod is the most irregular of these. It has preterite and conditional forms, which are often used with present and imperfect meaning, respectively. The present is conjugated irregularly:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First Person | gwn | gwyddon |
| Second Person | gwyddost | gwyddoch |
| Third Person | gŵyr | gwyddon |
The common phrase dwn i ddim "I don't know" uses a special negative form of the first person present. The initial d- in this form originates in the negative particle nid: nid wn i > nid wn i ddim > dwn i ddim. Such a development is restricted to a very small set of verb forms, principally this form of gwybod and various forms of bod (e.g., does, doedd, from nid oes and nid oedd respectively)."
The four verb-nouns mynd "to go", gwneud "to do", cael "to get", and dod "to come" are all irregular in similar ways.
| mynd | gwneud | cael | dod | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| Preterite | First Person | es | aethon | wnes | wnaethon | ces | caethon | des | daethon |
| Second Person | est | aethoch | wnest | wnaethoch | cest | caethoch | dest | daethoch | |
| Third Person | aeth | aethon | wnaeth | wnaethon | caeth | caethon | daeth | daethon | |
| Future | First Person | a | awn | na | nawn | ca | cawn | do | down |
| Second Person | ei | ewch | nei | newch | cei | cewch | doi | dewch | |
| Third Person | eith | ân | neith | nân | ceith | cân | daw | dôn | |
The forms caeth, caethon, caethoch often appear as cafodd, cawson, cawsoch in writing, and in places in Wales these are also heard in speech.
In the conditional, there is considerable variation between the North and South forms of these four irregular verbs. That is partly because the North form corresponds to the Middle Welsh (and Literary Welsh) imperfect indicative, while the South form corresponds to the Middle Welsh (and Literary Welsh) imperfect subjunctive.
| mynd | gwneud | cael | dod | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| North | First Person | awn | aen | nawn | naen | cawn | caen | down | doen |
| Second Person | aet | aech | naet | naech | caet | caech | doet | doech | |
| Third Person | âi | aen | nâi | naen | câi | caen | dôi | doen | |
| South | First Person | elwn | elen | nelwn | nelen | celwn | celen | delwn | delen |
| Second Person | elet | elech | nelet | nelech | celet | celech | delet | delech | |
| Third Person | elai | elen | nelai | nelen | celai | celen | delai | delen | |
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Main article: Colloquial Welsh prepositions |
Prepositions are words like on, at, to, from, by and for in English.[7] They often describe a relationship, spatial or temporal, between persons and objects.[7] For example, 'the book is on the table'; 'the table is by the window'.
There are approximately two-dozen or so simple prepositions in modern colloquial Welsh. While some have clear-cut and obvious translations (heb ‘without’), others correspond to different English prepositions depending on context (i, wrth, am). As with all areas of modern Welsh, some words are preferred in the North and others in the South.
The main prepositions used in modern colloquial Welsh are:[7]
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Most of these (but not all) share the following characteristics:[7]
Inflected prepositions
When used with a personal pronoun, most prepositions insert a linking syllable before the pronoun. This syllable changes for each preposition and results in an inflection pattern similar to that found in Welsh verbs. Broadly speaking, the endings for inflected prepositions are as follows:[7]
| Singular | Plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| First Person | -a i | -on ni | |
| Second Person | -at ti | -och chi | |
| Third Person | Masculine | -o fe/fo | -yn nhw |
| Feminine | -i hi | ||
