The page of Brithenig
`Yn nediwn seint yn llinghedig, yn nediwn seint yn cor'
Pronouns have separate subject and object forms:
eo, I; mi, me
ty, you; ti, you
ys, he; llw, him
sa, she; lla, her
nw, we; nw, us
gw, you; gw, you
ys, they; llw, them
sa, they; lla, them
Brithenig has two ways of saying you: ty,
thou, and gw, you.
Ty is singular and used for addressing people that the
speaker is familiar with, such as an immediate family member, a close
friend, a child, an animal, or god. Gw is used as a
singular when speaking to a stranger or a less familiar or more formal
acquaintance. It is also used to address more than one person no matter
the familiarity. Pronouns are subject to consonant mutation in the same
way other words are. If ty or ti is
mutated it is always written as dy to avoid confusion
with the preposition di, which has a different
pronounciation. Fi, the mutated form of
mi, becomes 'i in the spoken language,
especially after consonants.
Sa is used to mean `they' when 'they' is exclusively feminine.
For 'it' use the form appropriate to the gender of the noun. The
impersonal pronoun 'it' is always sa: Sa es bel
eidd, It is nice today.
There is a third person reflexive pronoun si,
himself, themselves (etc.); it is used as the object case with the
indefinite subject, yno, one, people, they,
derived from yn of, a man.
The direct object form of the pronoun have the option of coming
before or after a simple verb, but with a compound tense or an infinitive used
in the sentence, it can only come after the past participle or the infinitive,
to which it may be hyphenated.
Mi, ti and
si also have special disjunctive forms mwy or
fwy, twy or dwy or
thwy, and swy. These are used after
prepositions, after the conjunction ca, than, or when
a sentence uses two pronouns as objects:
Eo widdef twy e llw in ill castr, I saw you and him in
town
The disjunctive pronouns can also be emphatic, repeating the object pronoun:
Eo dy af twy, I love you!.
The verb usually agrees in number with the nearest subject:
Eo e Phadrig gwa a'll castr, Patrick and I are going
to town.
Similar is the use of the third person dative pronoun lle in
place of llw or lla after a preposition. By
itself it means 'to him, her, it, them' and can come before the simple verb or
after it like a direct object pronoun, but with a preposition it can only come
after the verb. Possessive pronouns precede the noun. Feminine singular nouns
take the soft mutation after possessive pronouns, and plural nouns take the
spirant mutation, masculine singular nouns do not mutate after possessive
pronouns:
mew, my
tew, your
sew, his, her, its
nwstr, our
gwstr, your
sew, their
Sew may refer to 'his, her, its or their'. To avoid
ambiguity the phrase can be followed with the preposition
di and llw, lla to clarify the
meaning. With other pronouns this is used to be an emphatic construction:
mew gas, my house
mew gas di fwy, MY house
The forms `mine, yours, his (etc)' are translated into
Brithenig as 'the mine' (etc):
ill mew, `mine'
ill nwstr, `ours'
ill tew, `yours'
ill gwstr, `yours'
ill sew, `his, hers, its, theirs'
llw, lla do not mutate, but other pronouns
do. The indirect object is often written with a prepostion such as a, to where the mutated forms are used:
Ys dwn yn llifr a fwy, He gives me (to me) a
book.
This is the usual order in Brithenig.
Brithenig has one case of personal prepositions which are derived from
cu, with:
cumeg, with me
cunwsc, with us
cunheg, with you
cungwsc, with you
cuseg, with him, her, them, it