Neither of those things happened ... oxymoronically, there was a deafening silence.
Here's what I wrote back then....
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. That gave me something to start on.
Let's take a look shall we....at random...naturally .... by the way, ♂ is male and ♀ is female . I never worked out what that upward-pointing arrow has to do with being male.
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 chwiliolau !!!!!!!
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.
These are testable theories! Very Albert Einstein.Very Total Eclipse.
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?
I could hide in my little attic for a few weeks until the shame and self-loathing receded a little bit. Then I could sell my two ultra-rare Danielle Dax Vinyl singles ( Jesus Egg that Wept and Inky Bloaters) , buy a ukelele with the proceeds, get the bus to Cardiff and busk with the only Welsh song I know all the way through, Paid Cheto a'r Pam, use the proceeds to buy a flight to North Uist and live a monastic, solitary life there . It just might work. Hey, I've just thought ... I know "Kevin Ayers" all the way through as well ! That should speed things up a bit.
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... very logical.
"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?
OK, enough of the polemics.... it's Ffa Coffi Pawb and Lluchia dy Fflachlwch drosda i ...