Welsh Word of the Day: Cymaint (as much)

In some of our previous articles on Welsh adjectives, we’ve included what’s called the equative form of the word. For example, the equative form of tlws (pretty) is tlysed. There’s no direct translation of these kinds of words in English – but imagine that in addition to prettier and prettiest, there were another form of pretty used specifically to mean as pretty as. That’s where tlysed comes in!

Some of these equative adjectives are significant enough in Welsh that they take on a life of their own, and function almost as independent words. One example of this is cymaint, the equative form of mawr (big), meaning roughly as much or so much.

Cymaint is made up of two parts. The first is cy-, a prefix that is common in equative adjectives, among other uses. We also see it in cynddrwg (as bad) and cyhyd (as long). The second part is maint, which means size, and itself comes from the proto-Celtic *manti (quantity).

Colloquially, it is sometimes pronounced like this:

There are technically three ways in which cymaint is subject to mutation.

However, due to the limited circumstances in which the nasal mutation arises, I can’t think of any in which we would see it applied to cymaint. The other two are definitely possible though, and you’ll see examples of them as you read on!

So, the primary way that we use cymaint is to say that something is as big as or as much as something else, whether metaphorical or physical. The full phrase is cymaint â, and the â actually causes an aspirate mutation to the next word. Remember too that â will be replaced by ag when it comes in front of a word starting with a vowel.

On a metaphorical level, I can say that I have cymaint â hi (as much as her). This is the context in which you will most often hear it used.

On a physical level, I can say that my bag is cymaint â’i bag hi (the same size as her bag), although this does sound a bit formal. Because of that, it is often eschewed these days in favour of the more colloquial, but still perfectly correct mor fawr â’i bag hi. Since mor means so, this is literally so big as her bag.

As in English with so much or so many, we can sometimes use cymaint to stress that a certain maint (size, amount) is large – take the phrase cymaint o hwyl (so much fun), or the very similar cynifer o weithiau (so many times). Cynifer is being used less and less often and may be perceived as quite formal, but you can basically treat it as a form of cymaint used when you are talking about a number of discrete things that can be counted.

It’s also fine, and more common, to just say llawer o hwyl (lots of fun). But there are a few contexts in which cymaint might be preferred for its emphatic value.

Here is a list of some of the most common set phrases in which you will see cymaint used.

• cymaint mwy / cymaint yn fwy = so much more
• rhyw gymaint = a certain amount / to a certain extent
• er cymaint = however much / despite how much
• cymaint eto = as much again
• cymaint a chymaint = not so much
• cymaint â phosibl = as much as possible

There are three things to remember about these expressions. The first is that there is a big difference in how the last phrase, cymaint â phosibl, is used in spoken and written Welsh. It should be written as above, but most people pronounce it as simply cymaint â phosib.

The second is that when cymaint or a set phrase involving it is used adverbially, it automatically becomes gymaint.

The last important thing to remember about cymaint is that it is not used with yn. In Welsh when you are saying something is an adjective, using bod or a conjugated form of it, you should usually insert yn before it (and this causes a soft mutation). However, this doesn’t apply to equative forms of adjectives. You say mae cymaint â (it’s as much as), and not mae’n gymaint â. This may be hard to get your head around at first since you’ll be so used to using the yn!