Foundations: grammar and register

You have two years and six units. Using only the per-unit AO weightings, decide how much of your private study should go on the accuracy of your Welsh, and where the rest should go.

1. 01List where each objective lives

   AO1 exists in exactly two places: Unit 1, worth 10% of the A level, and Unit 4, worth 20%. AO2 is spread across Units 1, 3, 4 and 6 at 5 + 5 + 5 + 10. AO3 is in Units 2, 3, 5 and 6 at 10 + 10 + 15 + 10. Totals: AO1 30, AO2 25, AO3 45.

2. 02Notice which objective is never absent for long

   AO3 is 45% and it is the ONLY objective in two whole units — Unit 2, the Package, and Unit 5, the society and translanguaging paper. Both of those are marked purely on how you write. There is no text knowledge to fall back on in either, and no fluency mark either: it is your Welsh on the page.

3. 03Check what happens in the AO1 units

   In Unit 1 the split is AO1 10 to AO2 5; in Unit 4, AO1 20 to AO2 5. That inverts the pattern of the first-language qualification. Here, in the oral examinations, HOW you speak carries twice or four times what you know about the film or the play. That is the correct reading of a second-language specification and it should reassure you: the examiner is genuinely testing your Welsh.

4. 04Convert the arithmetic into hours

   AO1 plus AO3 is 75% of the A level, and both are measures of language rather than of content. AO2, the text knowledge, is 25%. So roughly three quarters of your private study belongs on the language — vocabulary, patterns, mutations, tenses, register — and roughly one quarter on the film, the poems, the play, the stories and the history of the language. Most candidates invert that ratio because texts feel like homework and grammar does not.

5. 05Sanity-check against a single unit

   Unit 4 alone is 25% of the A level, more than any other unit, and 20 of those 25 points are AO1. If your spoken Welsh does not improve over two years, a quarter of the qualification cannot improve either — and no amount of extra reading about the play will recover it.

Result: AO1 30% plus AO3 45% is 75% of the A level and both are measures of the language itself; AO2, the knowledge of the set works, is 25%. The time budget follows: about three quarters on Welsh, about one quarter on texts — the opposite of most candidates’ instinct.

You meet the sentence ‘Es i i weld fy nghyfaill yng Nghaernarfon.’ Two words are mutated and neither appears in a dictionary in that form. Recover the radicals.

1. 01Find the mutated words

   ‘weld’ and ‘nghyfaill’ and ‘Nghaernarfon’ are all mutated. ‘Es i’ (I went) and ‘i’ and ‘fy’ and ‘yng’ are function words you already know.

2. 02Undo weld

   w- is not a normal Welsh initial for a verb of this shape, and the trigger in front of it is the preposition i (to). i takes the soft mutation. Which radical softens to g? None — g softens to nothing. So the radical must be gw-: gweld, to see. ‘i weld’ = ‘to see’.

3. 03Undo nghyfaill

   The trigger is fy (my), which takes the NASAL mutation. Which radical becomes ngh? c does. So the word is cyfaill, a friend. ‘fy nghyfaill’ = my friend.

4. 04Undo Nghaernarfon

   The trigger is yng, and yng is what yn (in) becomes before ngh. Nasal again, so ngh comes from c: Caernarfon. ‘yng Nghaernarfon’ = in Caernarfon.

5. 05State the method

   Trigger first, mutation second, radical third. Never guess the radical before you have named the trigger, because the same surface letter can come from different radicals under different mutations — f can be a softened b or a softened m, and ng can be a nasalised g or part of yng.

Result: The sentence is ‘I went to see my friend in Caernarfon.’ The three recovered radicals are gweld, cyfaill and Caernarfon — and each was recovered by naming the trigger before touching the letter.

Put the correct form of the word in brackets into each sentence, and name the trigger and the mutation for every decision. 1. Es i i (Caerdydd). 2. Dyma fy (tad) i. 3. Prynodd hi (car) newydd. 4. Mae hi’n byw yn (Bangor). 5. Gwelais i dri (ci) a (dwy) gath.

1. 01Sentence 1

   The trigger is the preposition i (to), one of the twelve the specification names, and it takes the soft mutation. C softens to g. Answer: Es i i Gaerdydd — I went to Cardiff. Trigger: i. Mutation: meddal.

2. 02Sentence 2

   The trigger is fy (my), which takes the nasal mutation. T becomes nh. Answer: Dyma fy nhad i — this is my father. Trigger: fy. Mutation: trwynol. Note that the echoing pronoun i at the end is normal and does not mutate anything.

3. 03Sentence 3

   Prynodd is a short-form (inflected) verb, and the object of a short-form verb takes the soft mutation even though nothing stands between them. C softens to g. Answer: Prynodd hi gar newydd — she bought a new car. Trigger: the verb itself. Mutation: meddal. The adjective newydd is unaffected because car is masculine.

4. 04Sentence 4

   The trigger is yn meaning ‘in’, which takes the nasal mutation. B becomes m, and yn itself becomes ym before m. Answer: Mae hi’n byw ym Mangor — she lives in Bangor. Trigger: yn. Mutation: trwynol. Do not confuse this yn with the predicative yn in ‘Mae hi’n byw’, which is a different word doing a different job.

5. 05Sentence 5

   Two decisions. tri (three) takes the aspirate mutation, so ci becomes chi: tri chi. dwy (two, feminine) takes the soft mutation, so cath becomes gath: dwy gath. Answer: Gwelais i dri chi a dwy gath — I saw three dogs and two cats. Note that tri itself has softened to dri as the object of the short-form verb gwelais, which is the same rule as sentence 3 applied one word earlier.

Result: Es i i Gaerdydd · Dyma fy nhad i · Prynodd hi gar newydd · Mae hi’n byw ym Mangor · Gwelais i dri chi a dwy gath. Six mutations, six named triggers — and the fifth sentence shows two rules stacking, with the object rule reaching the numeral rather than the noun.

Start from ‘Rydw i’n mynd i’r dref bob dydd Sadwrn.’ (I go to town every Saturday.) Change it (a) to the third person singular feminine, (b) then to the short past, (c) then to the first person plural, showing every knock-on change.

1. 01Read the starting sentence for its parts

   Rydw i (bod, first singular present) + ’n (the linking yn) + mynd (verbnoun) + i’r dref (to the town) + bob dydd Sadwrn (every Saturday). Only the first two words carry person and tense; the rest is fixed.

2. 02(a) First person to third person feminine

   Rydw i becomes mae hi. Answer: Mae hi’n mynd i’r dref bob dydd Sadwrn. Nothing else moves, because the verbnoun mynd is invariable and there is no possessive to agree. This is the cheapest transformation in the language and it is worth doing first in any multi-step question.

3. 03(b) Present to short past

   The periphrastic frame disappears entirely and is replaced by an inflected form. mynd is irregular: its short past first singular is es i, third singular feminine aeth hi. Since we are on the third person from step (a): Aeth hi i’r dref bob dydd Sadwrn. Note the adverbial phrase now sits oddly with a completed past — a real examiner might expect ‘bob dydd Sadwrn’ to become ‘ddydd Sadwrn diwethaf’ (last Saturday). Say so if the question invites it.

4. 04(c) Singular to first person plural

   aeth hi becomes aethon ni (we went). Answer: Aethon ni i’r dref ddydd Sadwrn diwethaf. Check the whole sentence: the verb has changed person and number, the pronoun has changed with it, and the time phrase has been made consistent.

5. 05Check the mutations last

   i’r dref: dref is tref (a town) softened after the preposition i, and it stays softened in every version because the trigger never moved. ddydd is dydd softened — an adverbial time phrase takes the soft mutation. Neither mutation was caused by anything we changed, which is exactly why the mutation check belongs at the end and not in the middle.

Result: Mae hi’n mynd i’r dref bob dydd Sadwrn → Aeth hi i’r dref ddydd Sadwrn diwethaf → Aethon ni i’r dref ddydd Sadwrn diwethaf. Three transformations, one irregular verb, and a mutation check that confirmed nothing needed to move.

The specification’s first named exercise is ‘correcting errors in text’. Correct this short passage and name every rule you apply: ‘Es i i Caerdydd gyda fy chwaer. Roedd hi’n canu yn y côr. Gwelais i tri ci ar y stryd. Mae’n gyfrifoldeb ar ti i dalu am y tocynnau.’

1. 01Scan for missing mutations after prepositions

   ‘i Caerdydd’ is wrong: i is one of the twelve prepositions that take the soft mutation, so it must be i Gaerdydd. Rule: treiglad meddal after i.

2. 02Check the possessive

   ‘fy chwaer’ is wrong twice over. fy takes the NASAL mutation, and ch is not a mutable radical — the radical here is chwaer (sister), which begins with ch and therefore never mutates at all. So fy chwaer is in fact correct as written. Say so: half the value of this exercise is knowing when NOT to change something.

3. 03Check the object of the short-form verb

   ‘Gwelais i tri ci’ has two errors chained. The object of a short-form verb takes the soft mutation, so tri becomes dri. And tri itself takes the aspirate mutation on what follows, so ci becomes chi. Corrected: Gwelais i dri chi ar y stryd.

4. 04Check the conjugated preposition

   ‘ar ti’ is not Welsh. ar conjugates, and the second person singular form is arnat ti — the specification’s own example sentence is Mae’n gyfrifoldeb arnat ti. Corrected: Mae’n gyfrifoldeb arnat ti i dalu am y tocynnau.

5. 05Read the whole passage back

   Es i i Gaerdydd gyda fy chwaer. Roedd hi’n canu yn y côr. Gwelais i dri chi ar y stryd. Mae’n gyfrifoldeb arnat ti i dalu am y tocynnau. Four decisions, three corrections and one deliberate non-correction — and in an examination you would write the rule beside each, because the marks are for the reasoning as much as the form.

Result: Three corrections — i Gaerdydd, dri chi, arnat ti — and one item correctly left alone, fy chwaer, because ch has no mutated form. Naming the rule beside each correction is what turns a guess into an answer.