This is excellent - I can have my cake and eat it!!
2 Likes
Even when you don’t know what the present is yet…?
2 Likes
Good point. I’m going to have to do some investigative work to find out what other people say!
I’m actually just trusting my ear here more than anything. Ei phrynu hi jars a bit when referring to buying a present, but people’s usage of Welsh changes from place to place, so this might be a dialect thing. I’ll ask around. I do have a half-baked theory of why I wouldn’t use ‘ei phrynu hi’, but I’ll reserve this for now until I find out what other people say.
3 Likes
Don’t keep us in suspense here, Mererid. All the best theories started out half-baked - so spill!
7 Likes
That’s interesting. Both Eirwen and her sister both also instinctively say ei brynu. I’m teasing them about it but maybe you can save their dignity,
Justin
2 Likes
The more I think about whether people say ‘ei phrynu hi’ o’r ‘ei brynu e/o’ when referring to an unknown gift, (or in my style of Welsh, prynu hi, prynu fe), the more I think that I’ve heard both, but would still use the masculine form personally.
Half-baked justification coming up, but please note that I have no academic proof or back-up of this, it really is just how my mind works.
We don’t go to a shop to buy a gift (feminine), we go to the shop to buy a ‘thing’ (masculine) or even less specifically ‘something’ that will then become a ‘gift’. To reiterate, the thing or object (again masculine) in the shop is not a ‘gift’ or a ‘present’ until we say it is. A necklace is a necklace (feminine). A book is a book (masculine). A ‘gift’ is a concept. We might give a necklace or a book to people as gifts, sure, but they are not originally called ‘gift’ or ‘present’. They are merely ‘things’ that we will gift (verb) or present (verb) people with.
If you are the lucky recipient of someone else’s act of giving and you don’t know what you’ll be gifted with yet, let alone its gender, then the pronoun ‘it’ in "Have you bought it yet?’ refers to ‘Have you bought the thing (masculine) yet (that you’ll be gifting to me as a present)? Wyt ti wedi ei brynu e eto? Wyt ti wedi prynu fe eto? Then you might go on to ask… What is it? Beth yw e? meaning ‘what it is the thing you’ ll be presenting me with?’ Beth yw e? Dw i ishe gwybod! I want to know!
I think it’s just to do with what you’re replacing the pronoun ‘it’ with.
I’ve got you a present. What is it? It’s a present.
I’ve got something for you. What is it? It’s a…brand new car!
If you want to use ‘it’ as a replacement for the noun ‘a gift’, I guess the feminine form would be fine. ‘Wyt ti wedi ei phrynu hi eto? Wyt ti wedi phrynu hi eto?’…
That said, the feminine’ it’ can sound a bit strange when you then go on to ask…‘Beth yw hi?’ for ‘What is she/it?’ because that sounds like you don’t know what ‘a gift’ is or means: (Q. What is she/it? A. She/it is a gift). You already know that.
What you really want to discover, however, is what is the thing (masculine pronoun it: e/o) that you’re being gifted with. That’s why I’m more likely to ask 'Wyt ti wedi ei brynu e eto? and not ‘Wyt ti wedi ei phrynu hi eto?’ unless I was expecting a specific thing that I knew to be feminine, like a ring, a chain, a new chair etc.
6 Likes
I agree with this analysis. The point is (and I think you are saying exactly this) that the masculine, being the so-called ‘default’ grammatical gender as in European languages generally, is naturally used where the specific identity of something is not the issue - like here, where the point of discussion is ‘being given something’. It is not (I think) that peth happens to be masculine - it is that masculine is the default for unknown or unspecified gender. And yes…if (on the other hand) the discussion had already specified an object, and it was feminine, then certainly the feminine form would be natural be used. A: Wyt ti wedi meddwl am brynu’r gadair newydd 'na? B: Dw i wedi ei phrynu hi’n barod! Have you thought about buying that new chair? - I’ve bought it already!
So I agree with Mererid, really.
9 Likes
Gareth - diolch yn fawr. That’s exactly it - it’s the unspecific ‘it’ which defaults to male, yes.
4 Likes
That’s great for Eirwen and Shian who are now demanding a lot of respect from me - until their next grammatical slip, of course, when I will mercilessly pounce!!
Welsh is so fascinating.
Justin
1 Like
On a slightly different note - given that the default is masculine, I’ve always wondered why it seems to be feminine in the situation where you say something like “Sa i’n siŵr. Bydd rhaid i fi feddwl amdani” - not “amdano”?
Or have I misunderstood somewhere along the line?
2 Likes
I was thinking the same thing!
I suppose it’s the difference between an abstract it (hi) and an unspecified, real it, which defaults to masculine if the gender isn`the known. Sort of makes sense as there is a difference between the two, but just a guess though.
5 Likes
Abstract situations are feminine, yep.
3 Likes
In fact, all situations are abstract, so my last sentence made no sense.
3 Likes
Dim problem mererid. I think we knew what you meant. 
A diolch i’r esboniad.
1 Like
Very true.
2 Likes
Exactly right Owain - abstract ‘it’: always feminine (some S dialects don’t do this though); unspecified or unknown ‘it’ - default masculine.
5 Likes
tryng to delete this
This has been an absolutely fascinating discussion so thank you to all the erudite contributors who did so much to clarify matters (I think).
I have worked through all three courses of SSiW and have often pondered on how you dealt with nouns where the gender is unknown, so this discussion has helped a lot. Any learner, of any language, has the problem of learning new vocabulary by picking up new words from various sources but would have to be very on the ball to always look at how the rest of the wording in the sentence falls into place to try to establish gender and then, not only try to remember the word but it’s gender also, especially in conversation.
It would seem that, even when they do so, learners could still fall into the trap of deciding a particular noun was masculine when the speaker, may themselves not be aware of the noun’s gender and falls back on the default masculine gender.
It appears to me that no-one is going to make too much of a fuss if the wrong gender is used, apart from the fact, as discussed in the case of "gift /present (detail unknown) as opposed to gift /present (specific item) example, occasional confusion could ensue.
I think that, for most learners (like me) being able to sort out such niceties in the immediacy of trying to converse in what is still a fairly unfamiliar language still remains a distant prospect.
A point for @aran. As mentioned earlier in the thread, conditional tenses are so common that, unless I’ve missed something in any of the re-written sections of the course, there hasn’t been a lot on this aspect of the language, so, if any further changes are envisaged to the content of course two or three, how would you feel about including a little more work on this please?
1 Like
I am putting this question after reading ‘23’ and I hope it isn’t answered between now and the end of the thread, but I didn’t want to forget it!!
I would automatically say “ei brynu fe eto” because I find it hard to say ‘u’ followed by ‘e’. Is this a quirk of mine? Is it downright wrong? Is it acceptable? Is it gog or de?
editing to add:
To @bryanroberts I may be wrong, but I suspect most people would only really notice if you used ‘hi’ for a man, a boy, or something else blatantly male or ‘e’ for a girl etc…!! Personally, I still have trouble with my ‘ci’ who I refuse to refer to as ‘e’ or ‘fe’ when she is a bitch… but I was told very strongly that I must not say ‘gast’!!!
To all> Is it now really really OK to say ‘gast’ about little Toffi fach???
1 Like