Middle Welsh (, ) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh ().
Literature and history
Middle Welsh is the language of a rich body of literature. Nearly all surviving early manuscripts of the Mabinogion are written in it, although the tales themselves are certainly much older. It is also the language of most of the manuscripts of mediaeval Welsh law. There are many translations and adaptations of chivalric romances (e.g. of the Grail and Charlemagne cycles), mostly from French. There are also a number of historical works translated from Latin, including a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, and Brut y Tywysogyon, a chronicle of Welsh history from the late 7th to the 13th (later to the 14th) century.Evans 1970: xxix-xxxvi A large number of religious works, such as lives of saints and theological tracts, based on Latin originals are preserved.Evans 1970: xxxvi-xl There are also geographical and didactic works, proverbs, medical tracts, genealogies, grammars for the instruction of bards and lists of triads.Evans 1970: xl-xliii
There is a sizable corpus of poetry in Middle Welsh. Some early poetry from a time preceding the Middle Welsh period is nevertheless preserved mostly in the linguistic form of that era: that includes Y Gododdin and the poems of Taliesin.Evans 1970: xxi-xxv From the Middle Welsh period itself, there are the works of the court poets (Gogynfeirdd) of 1100-1350, chiefly praise poems and commemorative poems, as well as a considerable number of religious ones. In the 14th century, a new style using primarily the cywydd metre developed, with its most notable representative being Dafydd ap Gwilym. The language of that period is sometimes described as early Modern Welsh, but poets writing until the early 15th century still used Middle Welsh forms and constructions.Evans 1970: xxv-xxix, xx
Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker.
Phonology The phonology of Middle Welsh is quite similar to that of modern Welsh, with only a few differences. The letter u, which today represents in North Western Welsh dialects and in South Welsh and North East Welsh dialects, represented the close central rounded vowel in Middle Welsh. The diphthong aw is found in unstressed final syllables in Middle Welsh, while in Modern Welsh it has become o (e.g. Middle Welsh = Modern Welsh "horseman"). Similarly, the Middle Welsh diphthongs ei and eu have become ai and au in final syllables, e. g. Middle Welsh = modern "seven", Middle Welsh = modern "sun".
The vowels are as follows: FrontCentralBackUnroundedRoundedCloseMidOpen Vowel length is predictable: vowels are long in monosyllables unless followed by a geminate or one of the consonants , , , , . The vowels could combine into the following falling diphthongs:Evans 1970: 3–4
1. ending in : , , , ~
2. ending in : , ,
3. others: , (and possibly , )
The diphthongs and , whose first component gradually changed into , were originally allophones of and , respectively, and no distinction between the two was expressed in Middle Welsh spelling, so their presence during most of Middle Welsh is not immediately observable. However, the fact that the modern pronunciations beginning with an occur in all word-final syllables, regardless of stress, makes it plausible that their distinctness from and was a legacy from the time before the stress shifted from final to penultimate syllables in Old Welsh. The full opening to and may have been completed at some point in later Middle Welsh, possibly the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries.Willis (2005: 7)
The consonants are as follows:Willis 2009: 10 LabialDentalAlveolarLateralPalatalVelarGlottalNasalStopFricativeTrillApproximant Consonants may be geminate. is mostly found in loanwords such as siacet 'jacket'.
Stress was placed on the penultimate syllable with some exceptions such as the causative verbs in -háu, e.g. sicrháu ('to make things secure' from sicr secure'). In terms of intonation, the tonal peak must have been aligned with the post-stress syllable, reflecting the earlier final stress of the late Brythonic period, since this persists even in Modern Welsh.Willis 2009: 6
Orthography
Differences from modern Welsh The orthography of Middle Welsh was not standardised, and there is great variation between manuscripts in how certain sounds are spelled. Some generalisations of differences between Middle Welsh spelling and Modern Welsh spelling can be made. For example, the possessive adjectives "his, her", "their" and the preposition "to" are very commonly spelled in Middle Welsh, and are thus spelled the same as the definite article and the indirect relative particle . A phrase such as is therefore ambiguous in Middle Welsh between the meaning "the cat" (spelled the same in Modern Welsh), the meaning "his cat" (modern ), and the meaning "to a cat" (modern ). The voiced stop consonants are represented by the letters t c at the end of a word, e.g. "protection" (modern ), "running" (modern ). The sound is very often spelled k before the vowels e i y (in Modern Welsh, it is always spelled with a c, e.g. Middle Welsh = modern "third cousin"). The sound is usually spelled with a u or v (these are interchangeable as in Latin MSS), except at the end of a word, where it is spelled with an f (in Modern Welsh, it is always spelled with a f, e.g. Middle Welsh = modern "apple tree"). The sound is usually spelled with a d (in Modern Welsh, it is spelled with a dd, e.g. Middle Welsh = modern "day"). The sound is spelled r and is thus not distinguished from (in Modern Welsh, they are distinguished as rh and r respectively, e.g. Middle Welsh "running" vs. modern ). The epenthetic vowel is usually written, in contrast to Modern Welsh: e.g. mwnwgyl rather than mwnwgl "neck".Evans 1970: 12
Letter-sound correspondences In general, the spelling is both variable and historical and does not reflect some sound changes that had taken place by the Middle Welsh period, most notably the lenition. Some of the less predictable letter-sound correspondences are the following:Evans 1970: 1–9, Morgan 1996 +graphemephoneme () () (hence for ) (hence for ) (word-finally) (elsewhere, reflecting mutation – see below)
(between consonants and vowels)
(occasionally; in the 3rd person possessive y and the negative particle ny) (only word-finally; especially in early texts)Evans 1975: 1
(non-word-finally; especially in early texts)possibly (word-finally) (elsewhere), possibly (word-finally) (elsewhere), (medially and word-finally) (mostly medially and finally)(rarely ) or or (occasionally) (postvocalically) (postvocalically) (before front vowels) (before back vowels and word-finally) (postvocalically) (before other vowels, rare)
Grammar
Morphology
Notable differences from modern Welsh Middle Welsh is closer to the other medieval Celtic languages, e.g. Old Irish, in its morphology. For example, the endings -wŷs, -ws, -es and -as are used for 3rd person singular of the preterite in Middle Welsh as well as the form -odd. In the same person and tense exists the old reduplicated preterite kigleu 'he heard' of the verb klywet 'to hear', which corresponds to the Old Irish ·cúalae '(s)he heard' from the verb ro·cluinethar '(s)he hears'.
Middle Welsh also retains more plural forms of adjectives that do not appear in modern Welsh, e.g. cochion, plural of coch 'red'.
The nominal plural ending -awr is very common in Middle Welsh, but has been replaced in modern Welsh by -au.
Morphonology Like modern Welsh, Middle Welsh exhibits in its morphology numerous vowel alternations as well as the typical Insular Celtic initial consonant mutations.
Vowels There is a productive alternation between final syllables and non-final syllables known as mutationEvans 1970Morris-Jones 1913 or centring (), which is by necessity triggered by the addition of any suffix and operates as follows: +Centring mutationfinalnon-finalexamplewy bwrd 'board' – pl. byrdeu dwg 's/he leads' – dygaf 'I lead'y y cledyf 'sword' – pl. cledyfeuawobrawt 'brother' – pl. broder hawl 's/he claims' – holaf 'I claim'
marchawg 'horseman' – marchoges 'horsewoman'
The centring mutation is due to a process of vowel reduction that operated earlier, in late Brythonic, when the stress was placed on the last syllable.
Further, there are two types of alternations that are caused by following vowels (extant or lost) and are no longer entirely productive, but nonetheless very frequent in the morphology. The first type is ultimate affection, which occurs in the last syllable of a word and is caused by a vowel that used to be located in the next syllable. The originally triggering vowel is either i or a, hence the alternations are referred to as i-affection and a-affection. The more common type is i-affection, which occurs in plurals with a zero ending and in the present singular of many verbs. In addition, in some cases, the singular has an affected vowel, but the plural does not (this has been termed 'reversion'). The alternation operates as follows: +Ultimate i-affectionnon-mutatedmutatedexamplea, aeeibard 'bard' – pl. beird maen 'stone' – pl. mein
safaf 'I stand' – seif 's/he stands'
dragon 'dracons' – dreic 'dracon'
Saeson 'Saxons' – Seis 'Saxon'e, o, wygwelaf 'I see' – gwyl 's/he sees' corn 'horn' – pl. cyrn
gwr 'man' – pl. gwyroewyoen 'lamb' – pl. wyn
Ultimate a-affection is found, most notably, in the feminine forms of adjectives that do have gender declension, and it changes the stem vowels as follows:Evans 1970: 36Morris-Jones 1913:120 +Ultimate a-affectionnon-mutatedmutatedexampleyegwynn (masc.) – gwenn (fem.) 'white'wocrwm (masc.) – crom (fem.) 'bent' The second type of affection is triggered by (typically) extant close vowels or semivowels in the following syllables, and is hence known as penultimate affection (in fact, it also reaches the antepenult in Middle Welsh). The effect varies somewhat depending on the triggering vowel,Morris-Jones 1913: 121 hence one may speak more specifically, for instance, of y-affection (). Penultimate y-affection is a regular feature of verb forms with an ending containing y (e.g. the second person singular and plural in the present indicative). Both it and other types of penultimate affection may also occur due to the addition of suffixes containing the respective vowels, e.g. in the plural of nouns. +Penultimate affectionsnon-mutatedtriggermutatedexampleay, i ()ecaraf 'I love' – kery 'thou lovest' dar 'oak' – pl. deri
cawr 'giant' – pl. kewria, ei ()eimab 'son' – pl. meibyonaei ( or )eimaer 'steward' – pl. meiriaeyeycaer 'fort' – pl. keyryd Penultimate and ultimate affection may occur in one and the same form, e.g. castell 'castle' – pl. kestyll, manach 'monk' – meneich 'monks', or, with reversion, elein 'fawn' – pl. alaned (the latter two may then be termed cases of ei-affection').
Consonants In contrast to modern Welsh, the consonant mutations are not always reflected in Middle Welsh orthography; this is especially true of the nasal mutation.
1. Lenition / soft mutation
Lenition turns voiceless stop consonants into voiced ones and voiced stops into fricatives (further turning into zero in the case of ). +Lenition / soft mutationnon-mutatedmutatedpbtdcgbf, v, u d d g∅mf, v, u lllr r It occurs most notably:Evans 1970: 14–21
a. in the second members of compounds: march 'horse' > moruarch 'sea-horse, whale';
b. in a noun preceded by the possessive pronouns for 3rd singular masculine and 2nd singular possessors (y 'his' and dy/th 'thy'): kyuoeth 'wealth, realm' > y gyuoeth 'his wealth, realm';
c. in a noun preceded by the numerals 1, 2 and 7: march 'horse' > deu uarch 'two horses';