Cadeirydd: Andrew Hawke
‘Arglwydes,’ heb ef, ay kyscu yd wyt ti?’ ‘Nac ef, Arglwyd,’ heb hi. ‘Mi a gyskeis, a phan doethost ti y mywn mi a deffroeis.’ [Teirnon Twryf Uliant a’i wraig yn chwedl ‘Pwyll’].
‘Ydach chi’n cofio ni yma’r Sulgwyn hwnnw ers talwm? ... Ydach chi’n cofio am be oeddan ni’n siarad?’ ‘Ydw’n iawn. Mi ddeudis i fod yn well gin i chi na’r byd.’ [Ted ac Annie Williams yn Rhigolau Bywyd Kate Roberts].
Yn nhreigl y canrifoedd rhwng pytiau’r ddwy sgwrs yna mae’r Gymraeg wedi gweld datblygiad pur arwyddocaol, sef mabwysiadu ffurfiau’r ail berson lluosog i gyfarch dim ond un person, er mwyn cyfleu rhyw gymaint o barch. Er bod y pâr priod cyntaf yn cyfarch ei gilydd fel ‘Arglwydd’ ac ‘Arglwyddes’, ‘ti’ a alwant ar ei gilydd, ond ‘chi’ yw’r rhagenw erbyn dechrau’r ugeinfed ganrif.
Mae hwn yn ddatblygiad cyffredin mewn nifer fawr o ieithoedd, a digwyddodd i ryw raddau neu’i gilydd ym mhob un o’r ieithoedd Celtaidd heblaw am yr Wyddeleg. Newid graddol fu hwn yn Gymraeg, wrth gwrs – ac mae pethau’n dal i ddatblygu – ond ganol yr ail ganrif ar bymtheg cafwyd cais i roi terfyn arno. Cododd gwrthwynebiad chwyrn ymhlith cenhedlaeth gynharaf y Crynwyr i ddefnyddio ffurfiau megis ‘you’ a ‘chi’ i un person yn unig ar dir crefydd a chydwybod. Mynnent ddefnyddio ffurfiau ‘thee’ a ‘ti’ i’r byd a’r betws yn ddiwahân, gan godi mur rhyngddynt â gweddill cymdeithas, ac ennyn y fath ddig a arweiniai at gosb a dioddefaint yn aml.
Mewn llyfr hynod gan dri Chrynwr o Sais, A battle-door for teachers & professors to learn singular & plural you to many, and thou to one ... [1660] rhoir enghreifftiau o amrediad eang o ieithoedd i geisio cyfiawnhau’r gwrthwynebiad, a’r Gymraeg yn eu plith. Yn y sgwrs hon edrychir ychydig ar yr adran hon (a’i hawdur), ac yna ar beth tystiolaeth arall o ganlyniadau’r arbrawf ieithyddol byrhoedlog ond diddorol hwn.
‘Arglwydes,’ heb ef, ay kyscu yd wyt ti?’ ‘Nac ef, Arglwyd,’ heb hi. ‘Mi a gyskeis, a phan doethost ti y mywn mi a deffroeis.’ (‘Lady,’ said he, ‘art thou asleep?’ ‘Not so, lord,’ said she, ‘I was asleep, but as thou camest in I awoke.’) [Teirnon Twryf Uliant and his wife in the tale of ‘Pwyll’].
‘Ydach chi’n cofio ni yma’r Sulgwyn hwnnw ers talwm? ... Ydach chi’n cofio am be oeddan ni’n siarad?’ ‘Ydw’n iawn. Mi ddeudis i fod yn well gin i chi na’r byd.’ (‘Do you remember us here that Whitsun long ago? ... Do you remember what we were talking about?’ ‘Yes, clearly. I said I preferred you to the world’) [Ted and Annie Williams in Kate Roberts’s Rhigolau Bywyd].
In the centuries between those two snatches of conversations Welsh has seen a quite significant development, namely the adoption of the second person plural forms to address a single person, in order to convey a degree of respect. Although the members of the first married couple use the titles ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ they call each other ‘ti’ [‘thou/thee’], but ‘chi’ [you] is the pronoun used by the early twentieth century.
This is a common development in many languages, and can be seen to some degree in all the modern Celtic languages except Irish. This was, of course, a gradual change in Welsh – and developments continue – but during the mid-seventeenth century there was an attempt to halt it in its tracks. The first generation of Quakers were fiercely opposed to the use of forms such as ‘you’ and ‘chi’ to a single person on the basis of religion and conscience. They insisted on using ‘thee’ and ‘ti’ without distinction, raising a linguistic barrier between themselves and the rest of society, and provoking such intense antagonism that it often led to punishment and suffering.
In a very peculiar book by three English Quakers, A battle-door for teachers & professors to learn singular & plural you to many, and thou to one... [1660], examples to support the objection are given of a wide range of languages, Welsh among them. In this talk I’ll look at this particular section and its author, and then explore some further material on the results of this short-lived but interesting linguistic experiment in Welsh.
Phrasal verbs (PVs) have been largely absent from the linguistic description of Welsh or treated as a marginal phenomenon. Although Welsh possesses a number of native verb-particle constructions, contact with English has been found to significantly reinforce their usage and productivity. For that reason, some Welsh scholars have described PVs as substandard elements of the colloquial. Numerous teaching materials and some dictionaries strive to sensitise Welsh native speakers and learners to the phenomenon of calquing, presenting PVs as incorrect, careless translations from English. These norms are in obvious disagreement with the wide-spread usage of phrasal verbs not only in spoken, but also written varieties of Welsh.
Bearing in mind that direct translations of PVs occur at a deeper level of interference than obvious lexical borrowings, it was considered worth investigating whether language-aware users of Welsh perceive PVs as tokens of interference from English and how deeply the monolingual-orientated standardisation processes permeate. The paper will present results of a field study conducted in the years 2015-2016, which comprised interviews with 55 professional speakers of Welsh accompanied with questionnaires on the acceptability of phrasal verbs. The study has demonstrated that the selected PVs were considerably well integrated in informal spoken Welsh, while in the written registers the acceptability was much lower depending on a number of intra- and extralinguistic factors. In general, the phenomenon of calquing phrasal verbs was not perceived as unacceptable or threatening for Welsh and a number of these constructions have been shown to be integrated into the standard language.
Ystyrir John Morris-Jones, athro Cymraeg cyntaf Bangor, fel prif safonwr Cymraeg llenyddol diweddar o hyd, a thraethawd MA ei ferch, Angharad Morris-Jones, ar The Spoken Dialect of Anglesey, yw'r ymdriniaeth academaidd helaethaf hyd yma a thafodiaith Ynys Mon.
Edrychwn ar ddiddordeb y JMJ cynnar yn yr iaith lafar ac yn ei dafodiaith ei hun, ac ar y modd y mae'n dal i gyfeirio at arferion yr iaith lafar at ddibenion profi pwyntiau gramadegol hyd yn oed yn A Welsh Gammar (1913), uchafbwynt ei yrfa fel safonwr.
Y mae Angharad Morris-Jones yn patrymu'r rhan gyntaf yn ei thraethawd ar forffoleg a gramadeg iaith Mon ar lyfr gramadeg mawr ei thad, a'r ail adran ynddo am eirfa'r dafodiaith ar y llyfr hynod arall hwnnw a gyhoeddwyd yn 1913, The Welsh Vocabulary of the Bangor District gan O.H. Fynes-Clinton.
Yng ngoleuni'r uchod, edrychir hefyd ar rai nodweddion gramadeg a ffurfdroadau diweddar y sylwyd arnynt e.e. yr amrywiadau ar rediad 'gan' yn 'gynnot ti, gin ti, ginti, gynno chdi'.