How to Use the Aspirate Mutation in Welsh

What would you say is the most distinctive feature of the Welsh language? I suspect everyone has their own answer, but one that I think comes up often is treiglo (mutation, as a phenomenon). Treiglo is not completely unique to Welsh – but it’s pretty close. This morphological phenomenon, by which the first letter of words undergo changes based on the grammatical context that they’re in, exists in all the Celtic languages and a very small handful of others, though in the latter cases it works very differently to Welsh and its sibling-languages.

If you haven’t come across them before, there are three kinds of treigladau (mutations) in Welsh. Each one refers to a certain kind of sound change, and applies to a limited number of letters. To learn how to use the treiglad (mutation), you need to master how each letter changes under that mutation, and then learn what grammatical situations cause that change to take place.

That makes it sound simpler than it is! There is a massive range of circumstances causing treiglad, and the rules regarding them are often applied inconsistently, particularly based on formality or dialect. The only way to get comfortable with treigladau is to practise using the language as much as possible.

The treiglad llaes (aspirate mutation) is the rarest kind of treiglad in Welsh – it applies to only three letters, happens in a very limited number of contexts, and is often eschewed in colloquial speech. It is called aspirate because it involves adding a breathy sound to the first letter of the word. The treiglad llaes turns the letter t into th, the letter c into ch, and the letter p into ph.

As I mentioned, many people omit the treiglad llaes when they are not in a formal environment, or, more commonly, replace it with the ubiquitous treiglad meddal (soft mutation). I still strongly believe it’s really important for new speakers to learn about it though!

Firstly, it’ll be crucial if you ever want to speak or write in formal Welsh, and even more so if you’re interested in the kind of literary Welsh used in poetry.

Secondly, other people will use this treiglad, even if infrequently, and understanding why that is can help you to recognise what words people are using even when the letters have changed.

Thirdly, and most importantly, treigladau shouldn’t be something to fear. They not only make Welsh unique, but they literally help individual phrases and sentences to flow more beautifully and harmoniously. Accept that you’ll get it wrong sometimes and that’s not a bad thing! You’ll be able to embrace and even enjoy the journey of learning about treigladau – yes, even the tricky treiglad llaes.

After ‘a’

The easiest way to remember this rule is to think of it in the context of the word a, the Welsh word for and. It sometimes changes to ac before a vowel, but in this case, an aspirate mutation isn’t possible anyway – so there’s no need to worry about that. Generally, any word that follows a (except for pronouns, which never mutate) should take an aspirate mutation. This rule is especially important in formal Welsh, where it’s strictly required, though many speakers also use it in everyday conversation.

One good example would be the phrase oedolion a phlant (adults and children).

A funny little quirk of this mutation is that it is less commonly applied to words beginning with t. So, a taxi and a car is tacsi a char, but most people would say car a tacsi instead of car a thacsi if flipping the phrase the other way around.

In general, as we’ve discussed, the aspirate mutation is just applied quite inconsistently – not everyone uses it outside of formal contacts, words beginning with t receive it less often, and words beginning with c receive it the most. But this tendency seems to be specifically strong when it comes to the a rule. The more you know!

After ‘ei’

Pronouns work quite differently in Welsh to the way they do in English. For example, the word hi means both she or her depending on where it is in the sentence; there aren’t separate words for these two meanings.

Another example is that the possessive pronoun ei means both his and her. However, in a lot of circumstances, you can actually tell which the writer or speaker means depending on the mutation it causes.

Ei comes before a noun or a verb. When it comes before a noun, like nain (gran), it means his gran or her gran. When it comes before a verb, it can be the same, as in ei nofio (her swimming), but it usually means that that verb is being done to the person to whom the pronoun refers. For example, ei arestio is arrest him or arrest her.

In both use cases, the construction is often followed up with hi (her) or fo / fe (him) to complete the phrase, but it doesn’t have to be.

Also in both use cases, ei causes a mutation. The only reason it hasn’t done so in the examples above is because they begin with non-mutable letters. In general, when ei means his, it causes a soft mutation, and when it means her, it causes an aspirate mutation, as well as h-prosthesis (this just means adding a h to the beginning of the word) to words beginning with a vowel.

So, to love him is ei garu (fo) and to love her is ei charu (hi). Similarly, his lover is ei gariad and her lover is ei chariad.

When it comes to the use of ei with verbs, things get even more complicated, because here ei can also mean it. We don’t just use the construction of ei + verb to refer to things done to people but also things done to other things! So when we’re talking about a llyfr (book), we can say that we are ei ddarllen (reading it).

Here, whether there’s a soft mutation or an aspirate mutation depends on the gender of the noun. Llyfr is a masculine noun which is why I applied a soft mutation to darllen (to read).

But what if instead of darllen llyfr (reading a book), I was plannu coeden (planting a tree)? In Welsh coed (trees) are feminine, so I would have to say that I was ei phlannu (planting it). On the other hand, a planhigyn (plant) is masculine, so if I was plannu planhigyn (planting a plant), I would instead use the phrase ei blannu for planting it.

The mutation after ei is the biggest exception to the rule that the aspirate mutation is often dropped in the colloquial language – pretty much everyone will still include this one, even if they are chatting very, very casually.

After ‘gyda’ and ‘â’

Just to keep things nice and simple, there are three separate ways to translate the word with into Welsh. And to make it even easier for everyone, two of them cause an aspirate mutation and the other doesn’t!

We’ll talk about â first since it’s slightly different to the other two. Â means with, and it evolved to do so out of a specialised use of a (and), which we discussed earlier. This is probably why it also causes an aspirate mutation. Â means with or by means of, and colloquially, it is mostly used in set phrases, or after particular verbs – take mynd â (to take with, literally to go with), or cwrdd â (to meet, literally to meet with), for example.

Let’s say I’m going to meet Sioned’s dad. In Welsh, I would say I am going to cwrdd â thad Sioned. Here we can see an aspirate mutation of tad (dad) to thad.

The second word meaning with is gyda. This actually comes from a too, just with an extra bit tacked on the front, and it’s the standard way of saying with in the vast majority of South Wales. It should also cause an aspirate mutation, particularly in formal and literary Welsh. So if I’m now doing something with Sioned’s dad, I am doing it gyda thad Sioned.

The third and final word meaning with is efo. This is used identically to gyda but it is more common in North Wales. Efo never causes an aspirate mutation these days. So if I’m doing the same thing with Sioned’s dad but I’m now from Gwynedd rather than Glamorgan, I’m doing it efo tad Sioned.

However, interestingly, there are records of efo also having caused the mutation in the past. This does make sense sense, since efo too originally comes from a (and). Why it lost the mutation while â and gyda retained it is a mystery.

After numbers

I know what you’re thinking – ‘What, I have to use an aspirate mutation after every single number in Welsh?’

Well, no, not really. I’ve been a bit cheeky with the title of this section, but I promise it was just to get your attention!

Many numbers in Welsh cause mutations, and there are two which cause the aspirate mutation. These are tri (three) and chwech (six).

Tri means three, but it isn’t used in every circumstance in which we’d use three in English. We use it whenever we’re discussing the number in an abstract sense, and we also use it when we’re counting masculine nouns. For example, three men are tri dyn. But when we are counting feminine nouns, we instead use the variant tair, so three women are tair dynes. This alternative word, tair, would never cause an aspirate mutation.

Note that I’ve used the singular dynes (a woman) rather than the plural dynesau (more than one woman), even though I’m counting.

This is just a quirk of the Welsh language – we always do this. You can use the plural if you want, but then you would have to insert the word o (of) in between the number and the noun, and this completely changes the mutation game; you’d then have to use a soft mutation on the noun, so tair o ddynesau.

But let’s see tri in action causing an aspirate mutation! Rather than talking about men and women let’s talk about children again. A child in Welsh is plentyn, and we know we need to use the singular form for counting, so three children becomes tri phlentyn.

Luckily, plentyn is a masculine word in Welsh so it requires tri; if it was feminine and required tair, it wouldn’t prove my point because tair does not cause any mutation.

The same pattern applies to chwech as well – and this number doesn’t even have an alternate feminine form to complicate things. What it does have, however, is an unusual rule: although every Welsh child learns to count chwech for “six,” when the number appears before a noun, it changes to chwe. So, for example, “six children” is chwe phlentyn.

I’ve hammered it into your heads enough by now that aspirate mutation is often omitted colloquially where it is technically required, and where it will always be found in formal writing and speech. One more thing I will say is that this omission is particularly common in the context we’ve just discussed – i.e. after the numbers tri and chwe(ch). It is very rare to hear this example of the aspirate mutation used ‘correctly’ when native speakers are just chatting casually, though as ever, I’ll give the disclaimer that this may vary significantly based on region and dialect.

After some prepositions

Prepositions in Welsh more often than not cause a soft mutation. However, there are a few exceptions which cause an aspirate mutation instead. Most of these are extremely literary words you are unlikely to hear unless you are reading very old books, poetry, or religious texts.

The three I thought were worth mentioning are tua (towards or about), oni (until), and na (than). Despite these being the less literary and formal of the words in this category, these mutations are still really only required in very formal language, except in certain set phrases – a good example of one of these is mwy na thebyg (more than likely).

On negative conjugated verbs

In all of the examples I’ve given thus far, the aspirate mutation only happens if it is possible for it to happen. That is, if the word starts with a c it will become a ch, a p will become a ph, and a t will become a th, but if the word starts with any other letter, no mutation will occur at all.

With the final context in which aspirate mutation occurs, this is not the same. Instead, if aspirate mutation is not possible, a soft mutation will be applied to the word instead.

When you are using a conjugated verb in Welsh, like dwedodd (he said / she said), or coginiais (I cooked), mutations are sometimes used to indicate whether you are being affirmative, interrogative, or negative.

The general rule is that a negative conjugated verb should take an aspirate mutation; this is because in very formal Welsh, we would precede that verb with ni, and ni causes an aspirate mutation. For example, ni choginiais i (I did not cook). It is realistically much more common to instead say choginiais i ddim (I did not cook), but the aspirate mutation should technically still remain.

Now, if you’re not saying I did not cook but instead he did not say, you’re in a trickier situation. It’s impossible to aspirate mutate here since dwedodd doesn’t start with a letter that can take aspirate mutation. So instead, the correct thing to do is to soft mutate; he did not say is thus ddwedodd o ddim.

As the language evolves, it is becoming more and more common to simply use the soft mutation in this scenario, regardless of whether or not the aspirate is possible: so goginiais i ddim for I did not cook. And some people do not use a mutation here at all.

A quick note before we finish – a related negative context in which the aspirate mutation can show up is when you’re saying neither this nor that. For example, ni theisen na phei (neither a cake nor a pie); here both nouns have aspirate mutated, after the negative particles ni and na. Again, this is one of those examples where you would have to be speaking very, very formally to think to use the aspirate mutation, even though it is technically grammatically correct.

That’s it! Those are the contexts in which the aspirate mutation is used in modern Welsh.

I haven’t included every single literary mutation rule, because they’re simply not relevant to most people. Instead I’ve tried to focus on what might realistically be used in the language day-to-day: that means mostly mutations that you could theoretically hear in colloquial speech, but also with the inclusion of some slightly more formal mutation rules that you might come across on the news or in a book.

The key take-away is to try not to be anxious about getting it perfect. People disagree widely and fervently about which mutations are mandatory, which are optional, and which are just plain archaic. It’s very likely that if you regularly talk to speakers of a certain dialect, you will end up picking up their patterns of mutation.

Do you use the aspirate mutation religiously when you speak Welsh, or leave it out entirely? Let us know!