Welsh Word of the Day: Adferf (adverb)

Today’s word of the day may not be used in everyday ordinary conversation, but since it’s actually a grammatical term itself, it’s an excuse for us to talk a bit about one of the most crucial concepts to grasp in a new language – how to use adferfau (adverbs).

Adferfau is the plural form of our actual word of the day today, which is adferf (an adverb), a singular feminine noun.

You may notice that this looks pretty similar to the English word adverb. That’s simply because they are both borrowed from Latin – specifically, from the word adverbium, itself borrowed from ancient Greek and meaning, you guessed it, adverb. All these words are constructed by putting the word for verb (which, in the Latin case, also means word more generally) after the prefix ad-.

To describe something as being used as an adverb, we call it adferfol (adverbial). And of course just to make things more complicated, there’s an adferfol form of adferfol itself, which is yn adferfol (adverbially).

So we can see from adferf itself that a verb is ferf, but what about the other parts of speech? Ansoddair (an adjective) and enw (a noun) both have quite intuitive etymologies, with ansoddair being built from ansawdd (quality) and gair (word), and enw literally being the same word that means a name. The subcategory of a pronoun is rhagenw.

A preposition is arddodiad and a conjunction is cysylltiad – again a very intuitive translation, as it literally means connection. The final two parts of speech are bannod (an article) and ebychair / ebychiad (interjection). For the latter, ebychair is more often used grammatically and ebychiad generally, but the two are largely interchangeable.

Adferfau themselves are kind of like ansoddeiriau (adjectives) for berfau (verbs); they describe the berf. They can actually be sub-divided into lots of different kinds.

• Adferfau that relate to the way in which something happens. A Welsh example of this is yn araf (slowly). This is the most common type of adferf.
• Adferfau that relate to where something happens. A Welsh example of this is tu allan (outside).
• Adferfau that relate to how often something happens. A Welsh example of this is weithiau (sometimes).
• Adferfau that relate to amser (time). A Welsh example of this is yfory (tomorrow).
• Adferfau of degree. A Welsh example of this is iawn (very).
• Adferfau cysylltiol (conjunctive adverbs), which are basically adverbs that function as conjunctions. A Welsh example of this is fodd bynnag (however).

As you can probably tell from the list above, many adferfau don’t always function as adferfau, but could work as enwau (nouns), ansoddeiriau, or cysylltiadau (conjunctions) in a different context.

So how do adferfau work in Welsh? There are two main ways.

Firstly, you can form an adferf out of an ansoddair. This is the same thing we do in English – we turn nice into nicely, efficient into efficiently, angry into angrily, and so on. We can do the exact same thing in Welsh and it’s actually simpler because instead of changing the word itself, we just prefix it with the linking word yn.

That’s the same grammatical action that we perform in sentences like mae Jac yn chwerthin ac yn hapus (Jack is laughing and happy) – use yn to link the ansoddair to the rest of the sentence. The sentence phrased yn adferfol would be very similar; we’d say mae Jac yn chwerthin yn hapus (Jack is laughing happily).

As you probably know, in both of these cases the yn is shortened to ‘n if the word before it ends with a vowel. So, Jac is smiling happily would be mae Jac yn gwenu’n hapus.

This word yn causes a soft mutation to ansoddeiriau that follow it, and this rule holds true when it’s being used to form adferfau, too. So if we switched Jac’s laughter to be tawel (quiet) rather than hapus (happy), we would instead have the phrase mae Jac yn chwerthin yn dawel (Jack is laughing quietly).

Two things to remember here: one, this particular kind of mutation doesn’t apply to words that start with rh and ll, and two, when yn means in, that’s a separate word and it causes a nasal mutation instead.

The second way of forming an adferf doesn’t use yn. These are mostly adferfau that relate to when, where, and how often something happens. In Welsh they are quite simple – you simply insert the gair (word) or ymadrodd adferfol (adverbial phrase) directly after the action you are describing.

Technically it can also be placed before, and this can be done strategically for rhythm and effect in poetry and music, but in everyday speech it is usually simpler and more natural to place it afterwards.

Let’s see some examples using the basic phrase maen nhw’n canu (they are singing / they sing).

• maen nhw’n canu gartref = they are singing at home
• maen nhw’n canu rhywle = they are singing somewhere
• maen nhw’n canu bob wythnos = they sing every day
• maen nhw’n canu heddiw = they are singing today
• maen nhw’n canu fis Awst = they sing in August

See that cartref (home) has become gartref, pob wythnos (every week) has become bob wythnos and mis Awst (August) has become fis Awst. Any word that can, will take a soft mutation when it is used yn adferfol.

Spotting these soft mutations is a good trick to help decipher whether a particular word or phrase is being used as an adferf! For example, we can recognise that weithiau is sometimes, which is an adverb, but gweithiau is just the ordinary old plural form of gwaith (work or sometimes a time of doing something).

Whew! Okay, that was a lot of information. Let’s finish off with a task. Below are five of the most common adjectives in Welsh. Can you convert them into adferfau – and for bonus points, use one in a sentence?

• poeth = hot
• glân = clean
• drwg = bad
• newydd = new
• cyntaf = first