Who could forget that it was a fake ...yes, totally fabricated, in both senses of the word, by little old me.
Anyway, knowing of my growing collection of Welsh Music LPs ... yes, LPs ... my companion in life got me one for a mere 25p, thus increasing my collection by 50%. There it is ...
Also ...let's take a closer look at rhyfelgyrch....
rhyfel (m or f) + cyrch ( m) → rhyfelgyrch (m)
Ages ago I put forward this theory that, as in some other languages, in Welsh the last element of a compound word determined the gender of the whole thing. I even made a big list of lots of words that show this to be true, with very few exceptions that I can find.
As usual, I asked my faithful reader(s) to try to find more examples of this, to either confirm of refute it, and I also asked if anyone had actually seen this stated anywhere ...because I haven't. Also as usual, there were no responses at all.
I've also been trying to find out why the very few exceptions I've come across are in any way different.
I've tracked the first thing I wrote about it ...to save you finding it, here it is ...
In German they have lots of words which are lots of words fastened together. This can be a pain in the bum for the poor learner, but there's one brilliant thing! The gender of the whole word is the gender of the last bit!
So if the last bit is feminine, so is the gender of the whole word !!! Nifty or what !
You could call it the "last element" system ... the last element of the word defines the gender.
Anyway, naturally enough, I wondered if there was anything like that in Welsh... tybed?
So ... I started to find some of them ... I already had a hefty collection of those "pull-aparts" where you can get an idea of what a word means by separating out the bits.... sometimes.
Let's take a look shall we....at random...naturally .... by the way, ♂ is male and ♀ is female .
hunllef .... llef is ♀ and so is hunllef ! Result
penbleth ... pleth is ♀ and so is penbleth !!
priddlech......llech is ♀ and so is priddlech!!!
rholbren ..... pren is ♂ and so is rholbren !!!!
trobwll ....... pwll is ♂ and so is trobwll !!!!!
llyfrgell ........cell is ♀ and so is llyfrgell !!!!!!
chwilolau .....golau is ♂ and so is chwilolau !!!!!!!
curlaw ..........glaw is ♂ and so is curlaw !!!!!!!!
daeardy ........ty is ♂ and so is daeardy !!!!!!!!!
fflachlamp ..... lamp is ♀ and so is fflachlamp !!!!!!!!!!
cwrcwd ...........cwd is ♂ and so is cwrcwd !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
amserlen ......... llen ♀ and so is amserlen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
...... what do you reckon? Am I on to something? Is this already known about ?
Here's another thought ... if this is true, then not only daeardy but all -dy words should be masculine.
And surely also all -dir words ( -tir) should be masculine as well.
Let's have look at a few ..
cefndir .... ♂
anialdir ..... ♂
ariandy ...........♂
popty ................♂
adardy ................♂
Crumbs ! Now, I actually thought about this and did a bit of investigating a while ago, and I remember that I did find at least one that didn't seem to work.... which naturally put me off the idea. I can't find the bit of paper I made my list on that day, no surprise there, but I haven't found any more counter-examples since.
Am I being a twerp and missing something obvious?
Is this theory something that everyone except me has known for years?
............................................................................................ later .....
So ... that's what I had to say about it then.... and I've found that bit of paper with the one that "doesn't work" on it ....
Here's the next installment ....
Well, firstly, the exception I found, and lost, was tegell = a teapot.
"te" is masculine, and "cell" is feminine ... but "tegell" isn't. it's masculine. Bah.
Since then I've found just 1 more "wrong-un" ... sylfaen
Sylfaen " foundation" is feminine, but its last bit, maen, is masculine. Bah again.
Can any of you out there think of any particular reason why those two don't "work" ?
Or is the whole thing just a coincidence .... it was just "luck" that the other 40 + that I've come across have all worked?
Anyhow, enough of these technical matters .... here's Eve Goodman